Gymbo Knows

Boxing has been on the decline for a long time now. The sweet science is slowing disappearing from the eyes of the average sports fan. What could be the reasoning behind the fall of boxing? Is it the fact that most young males have found the new and improved sport of mixed martial arts. MMA is beating up boxing in pay per view buys, gate revenue, fans and pretty much everything. The only thing boxing has is history and nostalgia.

Boxing fans can tell the great stories about “The Rumble in the Jungle” or the “Thrilla in Manilla.” They can go on forever about great fighters like Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali. Mixed Martial Arts is still a very young sport and some of the all-time greats are still fighting today. MMA is building up its history. In a couple years from now MMA fans will be able to say remember Matt Hughes, Tito Ortiz, George St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Rampage Jackson, BJ Penn and so on. It’s been great watching mixed martial arts grow and continue to grow.

So, when was the last time you were really excited about a boxing fight? Oscar De La Hoya vs Floyd Mayweather you’ll probably answer. Well. when was the last time you got together with the guys for a boxing fight other then the De La Hoya or Mayweather fight? Most people will have a hard time answering that questions. They’d probably say something like the last Mike Tyson fight.

Here is a clip from Bryan Burwell’s article “Latest bout with Insanity comes to CBS”

“Boxing’s decline has nothing to do with a lack of raw action. It has more to do with a void in the great talent that once dominated the sport. All I want is for someone to realize what a distasteful freak show mixed martial arts is in this bastardized form. What I want is for sane folks to slow down this gradual slide into a post-Apocalypic haze in which the worst elements of human nature are sanctioned and celebrated. What I want is for us to stop glorifying the most deviant aspects of our own personalities, the ones in which pit bulls, roosters and human beings can be gored, gouged and brutalized for sport, and where intelligence is a fault and the dumbing down of our society is considered a point of pride.”

1. He’s right boxing’s decline has nothing to do with a lack of raw action. Boxing has plenty of action it just takes forever for promoters to put the top fighters against one another. Prime Example is Roy Jones Jr. vs Felix Trinadad, I wanted to see that fight like 10 years ago.

2. Boxing’s decline has to with poor marketing. The average person doesn’t know who the top boxers in the world are. The Boxing fans may know who Joe Calzaghe, Chad Dawson, Mikkel Kessler, Ricky Hatton, Kelly Pavlik but no one else does.

3. No quality boxing cards. When was the last time boxing put together a card with more then one good fight on it? They need to put a card together with more then one quality fight. The UFC atleast has a main event, sub-main event and another quality match up people care about. Boxing has one fight. Sorry to say but the average boxing fan doesn’t watch the under card bouts.

4. Boxing has plenty of talent. How can the athletes in every other sport get bigger and better each year but boxing has no talent. It’s just poor marketing and MMA is kicking their ass in the area of marketing.

Bryan Burwell is obviously a big time boxing loyalist and very ignorant when it comes to the sport of mixed martial arts. Boxing is a brutal sport, just like MMA. Boxing has two guys going toe to toe in the ring trying to do harm to one another, just like MMA. The only difference is MMA you can kick, perform submissions and take the fight to the ground. For the most part the “Fight of Year” in boxing is usually given to the fight where both fighters are beating the piss out of each other for 12 rounds (Gatti vs Ward 1 and 2). Fight fans go to a boxing or MMA bout hoping to see two guys laying it all out on the line. In the end its pretty much the same thing isn’t it.

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