Apr 10 2007
Boxing vs. MMA Striking
After Dana White and Floyd Mayweather Jr’s tiff, there’s been a lot of talk recently about the quality of boxing in MMA. Today I saw a well written, but flawed article in IndsideFighting.com.
The article starts off strong with records of former boxers losing in MMA but makes some unsubstantiated conclusions, why exactly wouldn’t shoulder rolls work and why would smaller gloves favor looping punches? But more importantly it misses out on analyzing large amounts of data:
* K-1 has knees, kicks and clinch and many of the top fighters (Hoost, Kaman, Leko, Hug, Cro Cop, etc.) are excellent boxers, much better than most MMA’ers.
* Today’s MMA fighters are more likely to work with boxing trainers than in the past. Probably as a result pf this the level of boxing in MMA has gotten a lot better in the last 3 years.
* Many contenders and some MMA champions are some of the better boxers within MMA. Some come from boxing backgrounds. Lytle, GSP, Fedor, Kang, Davis, Cro Cop, Pulver, etc.
Personally I think in 3 years you won’t hear much criticism of MMA fighter’s boxing skills. The sport is just evolving.
