Canadian Politics Today

In the context of my response to kimmy, sure it is. She doesn't like all the rules and ref interference of boxing and I said boxing more like a sport.

There are only a few ways to hit your opponent and your stance is specified. Compare that to UFC where there are so few rules and you can hit and grapple as needed.

In context, MMA is more like a street fight than boxing.  Absolutely.

But you can't hit and grapple as needed. There are a lot of rules around what you can and cannot do as far as hitting and grappling. You can't spike people on their heads when you take them down. You can't elbow in a downward motion. You can't kick the head of a downed opponent. You can't hit a competitor in the groin. You can't fishhook or gouge eyes. You can't pull hair. You can't grab the fence. You can't run away from your opponent. You can't Punch to the back of the head. You can't do joint locks on fingers.

I could go on and on.

My issue is you comparing UFC to street fighting. it's like saying the Liberals are more like fascist Italy than the NDP because the Liberals are further to the right. It's a silly comparison that makes he Liberals (and the UFC) seem like something they're not.

Interesting.  I've only been following this very casually, but I have a question.  Was the recent fight by boxing rules or MMA rules?  If the former, would the MMA fighter (McGregor?) have fared better or perhaps won if MMA rules had prevailed?

To add to what BCC said, it makes a huge difference that the fight was fought using boxing rules and not MMA rules.  It's a completely different skill set.  The special skills that make Mayweather one of the greatest boxers ever aren't very useful in an MMA fight.  The punching is the same, but the defense is completely different.

You could stand right in front of a professional boxer and throw punches at him all night, and not hit him once. He could dodge or duck or deflect or block every punch you tried.   It's an impressive skill.   But it's all based on the idea that you're only allowed to hit your opponent's head and upper torso in boxing.  The boxer doesn't have to worry about being kicked in the leg, or grabbed, or taken off his feet, because none of that is allowed in boxing.

Boxers and MMA fighters stand differently and move their feet differently.  MMA fighters have to stand in a way that they are ready to defend against being kicked in the legs, or being grabbed by the legs and taken to the mat.  Boxers stand in a way that promotes upper body mobility. They fight tall, with their hands high, and it doesn't matter if their legs are vulnerable, because their opponent can't attack their legs.

An MMA fighter will usually use a lower, wider stance and be ready to get their torso low if their opponent closes in, because they might need to defend against being taken to the mat, or conversely because they might want to grab their opponent's legs and attempt a takedown. If a boxer tried to use a traditional boxing stance and boxing footwork in an MMA fight he would be very vulnerable to being taken to the mat.

The finer points of boxing artistry-- head feints, ducking and weaving and all of that sort of thing-- don't really protect you if your opponent wraps your legs up and drives you against the fence.  However, good boxing technique is still a big asset for an MMA fighter, because every MMA fight starts standing up, and if you don't know how to defend yourself against someone who can strike well, you can get knocked out.  Some MMA fighters, like Chuck Liddell, had very successful careers by combining the ability to punch really well with the ability to defend against being taken off their feet.


Ex-boxing champ James Toney tried to fight ex-MMA champ Randy Couture in an MMA fight. Toney was confident he could just knock Couture out.  Couture was much smaller and much older than Toney.   In the opening seconds of the fight, Couture simply caught one of Toney's legs and yanked him off his feet, and Toney had no idea how to protect himself when he wasn't standing up. Randy easily manhandled him on the ground until he had Toney in a "sleeper" hold, and Toney went unconscious. The fight only lasted a couple of minutes and Toney didn't get to throw a single punch.  If Toney did have a chance to land a punch he probably would have knocked Couture into retirement, or orbit, or both... but he simply wasn't able to stay on his feet long enough to do it.


One boxer who has had success in MMA is Holly Holm, who had a very successful boxing career before moving into MMA.  But she was also a kick-boxer, and so she is very comfortable with using a variety of different footwork and striking techniques.  As well she has trained very hard with MMA coaches to learn to protect herself against being taken off her feet, and she is extremely good at that.  People remember that Holly beat Ronda Rousey using a kickboxing-style kick to the head, but she had actually beaten Ronda up for 2 straight rounds using mostly boxing, until Ronda was so tired and dazed that she was a sitting duck for the knock-out kick.

So boxing is a great tool for MMA fighters to have, but it can't be your only tool in MMA, or you end up looking like James Toney.


 -k

I understand what you're saying, but I think you're really underselling the amount of skill and technique involved in MMA.  The work that they do in clinches and especially when the fight goes to the mat is a chess match unlike just about anything else in sports.  And because the fighters have so many options to adapt if the fight isn't going their way, I think it's actually much more strategic than boxing. Understanding your opponent's skillset and preparing for them and devising a gameplan to counter them is such a big part of MMA. 

 -k

That's fair, I won't dispute that there is a lot of strategy in MMA, but in the context of your original response about 'brutal knockouts' of UFC vs. boxing (as quoted from the link), I still think UFC is more brutal than boxing; and unlike you who finds the rules and interference of boxing tedious, that's exactly what I like about boxing. 

Sure, Boxers get knocked out too but that's not the part I enjoy, which is what I was saying about the part I didn't like about the Mike Tyson era of boxing.  When I was in kickboxing, I was the same, I preferred point sparring and didn't want to mess up my pretty face getting hit.     

UFC, as you said, there is very little interference and as a result, the win often comes more viciously.  You can have your opponent down and elbowing them, but the ref won't interfere until someone is about to get seriously hurt whereas in boxing it would never even get to that point.

Different strokes as I said, but personally although I enjoy watching both, I prefer boxing and for the very same reasons you dislike about boxing. 

I watched a couple previous Mayweather fights right before this fight.  Floyd was much slower & less agile vs McGregor, you could tell father time was catching up.  Floyd basically waited for Conor to punch himself out & get gassed then finished him.  Mayweather is so efficient with his energy it's great to watch, he stays calm too so doesn't have his emotions expend extra energy either (like anger, excitement etc) or have an adrenaline dump.

Conor did well better than I thought, but Floyd was also moving slow & sloppy in the early rounds.

MMA does have more blood, and occasionally some pretty gruesome injuries (like Frank Mir breaking Tim Sylvia's arm in half, or Anderson Silva's shin snapping like a twig against Chris Weidman...)    And some of the knockouts are startling.

But in spite of all that, I think that boxing is actually more dangerous for the fighters. In the course of a fight the boxers take so many punches to the head, and I think the continual blows to the head are actually more dangerous than the "highlight reel" knockouts sometimes seen in MMA.

People think "oh, well they have those big padded gloves on, so the blows aren't as hard."  But that's completely false.  Brain injuries don't come from hard objects hitting the outside of your skull. Brain injuries come from your brain bouncing against the inside of your skull. And a fist in boxing gloves can make your brain bounce against the inside of your skull just as easily as a fist in little MMA gloves.  Boxing gloves don't protect your opponent's brain... boxing gloves protect your knuckles.

And the other thing is how the sports handle fighters who are in trouble.  In MMA, if a fighter is stunned, the referee stays back and allows the opponent to move in to finish the fight, and the referee stops it when the stunned fighter isn't able to defend himself anymore.  In boxing if a fighter is stunned, the referee steps in, gives the dazed fighter a moment to recover, and sends him back to get stunned some more.  This can happen several times in a fight. I think it's actually more dangerous to let the guy keep getting stunned and giving him time to recover so he can get hit some more. It's why sports like hockey and football have a "concussion protocol" so that players who get stunned by blows to the head have to leave the field for a while.

Letting the opponent "go in for the kill" in MMA might seem savage, but I think the boxing approach is actually more brutal on the injured fighter.

 -k

One thing that really surprised me about the Mayweather-McGregor fight is how it captured the imagination of people who normally have zero interest in either boxing or MMA.  I know several people who've never watched a fight in their lives who went to jam-packed sports bars to see the fight.  Listening to them try to explain why the fight was important was a big deal was very interesting.

"Well, Floyd Mayweather is the boss of the boxers, and Conor McGregor is the boss of the UFCs, and so they are going to fight to find out who is the best so that all of the boxers and the UFCs will know who they should follow?"

Basically like listening to Laina explain football.



 -k