When I'm right I'm really right...

Underground
1

For anybody who's read my stuff at maxboxing.com for the past few years, I'm sure you know how I've often criticized the sport's power brokers for basically quibbling and running it into the ground.

About three years ago I came to the conclusion that MMA was going to surpass boxing unless the latter underwent some radical overhaul. Which, of course, it didn't. I don't think that was a surprise to anybody who read my work at MMA sites but I got a lot of emails from people reading maxboxing. What was funny was the stuff I heard in the beginning:

"MMA is a fad -- it won't be around in five years."

"Nobody is going to watch that"

"Look at the cheesy advertisers they attract"

In 2003 I wrote that MMA would surpass boxing for total revenue generated in 5-10 years. Now, with the mainstream media literally forced to give it coverage because they cannot ignore it, you are seeing the early indications of admission. I think that timeline was far too generous. By 2008 MMA is going to be "bigger" than boxing. Ask yourself -- how many casual sports fans know who Chuck Liddell is compared to the heavyweight champ? Or Floyd Mayweather? How many of each guy's fights have they ordered?

Many top boxing writers, including Bernard Fernandez, Steve Farhood, Kevin Iole and others even say that MMA can no longer be ignored.

This weekend's pay per view is going to be the tipping point, IMO. And as the sport continues to explode with so many more shows and organizations, you see more MMA on cable tv than boxing.

It just reminds me of when people said hip-hop would never last.

In closing, I was right. Damn right. I'd like to thank all the readers and fans for supporting the sport and helping it grow. I'm not saying anyone has to like MMA and it certainly will face its challenges and plateaus in the future, but if there's a baseline trend for why it's taking off, I think it's because it's what boxing used to be -- a sport where the best faced the best and putting on a good show was more important than being unbeaten through matchmaking and management.

Enjoy the fights.

"A Cancer on the sport"
http://www.maxboxing.com/Probst/Probst020306.asp

edited for spelling

2

4 years ago, when I tried to show people at work MMA, they would look on in horror and disgust... I would always say "its the sport of the future"...those people literally laughed in my face...

f$%kin idiots

3

EXACTLY

4

The man was right. Check out his breakdown of UFC 66 at InsideFighting right now:

http://www.insidefighting.com/betweenRoundsDisp.aspx?uid=3329

He's also got a profile of Ortiz up at the UFC's site right now.

5

"kickboxing, sir. its the sport of the future."

6

Say Anything -- great movie and a great line.

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thanks. it only took almost 9 hours for someone to notice :)

8

lloyd dobler rules.

9

Plastic... That's the future.

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lloyd lloyd null and void.

11

dissed in the malibu, doesnt know what to do.

12

loli can't believe someone actually knows that quote from the 7-11 scene
in say anything

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"The interesting thing to me if that if there was no "mixed" in the show, if the guys just came out winging 100% in every match with no wrestling or subs, in other words if it was just horrible boxing, the UFC arena fans would love it all the more. It IS the new boxing in a sense." --- Yah thats retarded, that would have no ratings. People go crazy at toughman events as well.

14

Jase:

One reason, I believe, that boxing had the downturn after the 80's was the spread of "title holders". We went from basically the WBA and WBC to the alphabet soup that we have not. That began in the 80's.

With the IFL, Strikeforce, UFC, Pride, WEC, KOTC, spread (which will only grow with the increase in cash flow MMA is experiencing), do you think that MMA is putting one foot in the path that helped hurt Boxing? Obviously Pride and the UFC have shown that they cannot play in the same sandbox and it won't be any different with the other competing organizations. Good or bad?

Samoa.

15

Samoa, your post wasn't addressed to me, but my feeling is that as long as the UFC is considered THE premier organization, it won't matter who's champ of the other organizations. The huge advantage that the UFC has over boxing in the 80s is that UFC has become synonymous with MMA. WBA and WBC were never synonymous with boxing.

16

I would agree to a certain extent, but MMA is so young that eventually another organization may become as prominant or at least rival the UFC. In boxing you have promoter issues, but you don't have two fighters that are excluded from fighting each other due to contractual agreements with organizations.

Even now, we have the "What If Wanderlei fought Chuck?" or "What if Fedor fought Sylvia" etc and that is with really only TWO major organizations.

Samoa.

17

I guess what I'm asking is "will the validity of the sport be questioned when the two best fighters at one weight can't fight each other?"

Look at all the great matchups over time in Boxing and the only thing holding those fights up until they happened were the fighters willingness to fight each other; not contractual organizational differences.  Fedor and Sylvia may have WANTED to fight each other this year, but they COULDN'T.  I don't believe that Boxing faced this kind of problem; at least not at the scale that it is right now in MMA.

Samoa.

18

Samoan writes
"With the IFL, Strikeforce, UFC, Pride, WEC, KOTC, spread (which will only grow with the increase in cash flow MMA is experiencing), do you think that MMA is putting one foot in the path that helped hurt Boxing? Obviously Pride and the UFC have shown that they cannot play in the same sandbox and it won't be any different with the other competing organizations. Good or bad? "

A maxboxing reader wrote in after a recent piece I did that pointed to that as a big prob in boxing.

I don't know the answer. It definitely is a concern. Remember in the Golden Era of boxing, in the 1950s, that was when there were NO unification bouts that never happened, because there was basically the NBA (what later became the WBA).

I don't know how the sport will develop, regarding different "superpower" organizations. Right now the UFC is the stateside equivalent of that. I don't know what happens if PRIDE or some other org gets huge in the States. I sure hope it doesn't happen the way it did in boxing, with four "major" largely accepted sanctioning bodies, awful mandatories because their managers pay off the right people, etc.

I will put some thoughts down on it soon. I actually see it as analogous to the merits of a free market system vs. a monopoly in some ways, and might expound on that. But that's only because I'm a trained political scientist ;).

19

well thats the fundamental difference (from the business side). UFC is a
promoter not a sanctioning body. So compare the promoter problems of
boxing to the pride/ufc issues of today. i think ultimately we will see
fighters able to move from one org to the other as they begin to the be
the power rather than the sport.

in the beginning it was the spectacle of it all. now its the first-mover
organization that is popular. but inevitably, it will be the fighters who
have the power and will begin to dictate terms.

in five years or less, UFC will either stopped it with the exclusive contracts
or the biggest fighters will all just be free agents and the UFC will be
marginalized. the future is with the fighters.

20

Great idea for a column Jason