by David P. Greisman (photo by Derek Hamilton)
It seems as if whenever the mainstream media turns its attention to the combat sports, two themes emerge with maddening regularity: boxing is on the decline and is desperately in need of saving; and mixed martial arts is experiencing a meteoric rise that may lead to the sunset of the Sweet Science.
It’s unnecessary.
Yes, mixed martial arts, or MMA, is here to stay – it’s hit the covers of ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated, the weigh-in for this past Saturday’s Chuck Liddell-Quinton “Rampage” Jackson rematch was televised on ESPNEWS and Liddell made a cameo on a recent appearance of HBO’s hit series “Entourage.”
In America, it is a sport where the most well known promoter – Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC – went from the brink of extinction to a business that now rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual pay-per-view revenue. The sport is indeed growing at a healthy rate, allowing numerous other smaller promotions to gain a foothold and signifying that this phenomenon will not be a mere flash in the pan.
Some in boxing feel threatened by this.
The backlash comes from message board contributors who tear down the sport and its fighters at any opportunity. It comes from boxing promoters such as Lou DiBella, who while appearing on ESPN broke out Sen. John McCain’s line about MMA being human cockfighting.
It’s unnecessary.
Boxing and MMA need not collide in a sort of commercial rivalry, not when they can coexist in a market that caters to both the old and new definitions of “hardcore fight fan.” Instead of going head-to-head, they can be hand in hand.
Showtime has already partnered with multiple groups, having broadcast their premiere episode of Elite Xtreme Combat in February and having scheduled a pay-per-view for this Saturday and another for June 22. As for HBO, the talk has been that UFC will not replace boxing on their airwaves, but rather join it as another element of the network’s programming.
Joe Rogan, the color commentator for UFC, noted his love of the Sweet Science while debating with the aforementioned DiBella. Over the weekend, this scribe watched the Liddell-Jackson pay-per-view with a fellow boxing columnist. It was his first time dropping hard-earned cash for an MMA card. It won’t be his last.
But if boxing and MMA are to coexist, then the sports must succeed, in their own ways, over a crucial 28-day period – the four weeks that began with the Liddell-Jackson rematch and end on June 23.
On that day, HBO will broadcast a main event featuring junior welterweights Ricky Hatton and Jose Luis Castillo, UFC will air the live finale to its “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show/tournament on Spike TV, and former heavyweight titlist Ray Mercer will take on cult street fighter Kimbo Slice in what is being billed as an MMA pay-per-view. But between then and now, certain things must happen for the benefit of both sports.
The Liddell-Jackson rematch brought good and bad. Liddell lost via first-round stoppage, a result that some may think would squander all the hype and publicity directed toward the now-former light heavyweight champion. But UFC is constantly ready for the upset, ready to market the surprise victors and to move on either toward eventual rematches or with rising superstars. Add in their ability to fit many exciting fights onto one telecast, and fans tend to be quite willing to dish out money for monthly pay-per-views. On Saturday, their aired seven fights, plenty of bang for the buck even though the main event ended quickly.
This coming Saturday, the minor Shannon Briggs-Sultan Ibragimov boxing pay-per-view needs to do well, even if it means that far too many people paid for a bout that should have been seen on HBO or Showtime. Because although the card making a profit could encourage promoters to continue taking fans’ money, it may potentially show the networks that fans want to see boxing and are worth investing in.
On the same night, Brock Lesnar needs to make a good accounting of himself in his MMA debut. His name brings in outside interest to a burgeoning sport, attention that could bolster Showtime’s recent commercial venture as they partner with some of the smaller promoters.
A week later, Miguel Cotto defends his welterweight title against Zab Judah in a boxing match that should be on HBO’s World Championship Boxing instead of on pay-per-view. Nevertheless, a good fight and an exciting undercard will do for the Sweet Science what Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather, for all intents and purposes, failed to accomplish.
The UFC is like football, marketing its sport much like the NFL markets its uniforms, guaranteeing that people may tune in for the star value but will continue coming back for the overall product. Boxing, however, is like basketball, for it relies on individual superstars to bring in consumer interest, a strategy that can be fruitful in some markets but may not resonate with others.
The De La Hoya-Mayweather pay-per-view seemingly refused to market its sport or its future, as BoxingScene’s Cliff Rold wisely pointed out in his May 10 column. But if any casual or new fans choose to buy Cotto-Judah, it would benefit them and the sport if stars emerge who will lead boxing into the future.
Cotto-Judah is being counter-programmed by Showtime’s monthly Showtime Championship Boxing series, scheduled a week later than usual due to the network’s June 2 MMA pay-per-view. Yet the decision makers have gotten away from their usual providing of great fights on paper, opting for two bouts that focus on light heavyweight names Antonio Tarver and Chad Dawson. This is clearly not the same philosophy that brought us slugfests like Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo and Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez.
UFC returns on June 16 with a pay-per-view aired live from Northern Ireland. And whereas UFC 70 aired on tape delay from Manchester, this show will begin in the afternoon. Although the card is headlined by Rich Franklin’s fight against Yushin Okami, the other bouts are certain to draw interest from all who bought tickets or the telecast.
Showtime’s June 22 pay-per-view is negligible in importance – only the most hardcore of the hardcore fight fans will tune in. It’s the next day that may mean the most out of these crucial four weeks.
On HBO, Ricky Hatton and Jose Luis Castillo will fight on a card that may, in years past, have cost fans an additional $50. With MMA being offered for free on a basic cable channel, the boxing must stand out as worthy of attention.
As for that series finale of “The Ultimate Fighter,” it will show why that series has succeeded where “The Contender” and “The Next Great Champ” could not. The focus has been on the sport and its competitors – on their training, on their personalities and on the fights themselves. There are no longer any challenges, nor did the producers choose to add sound effects or to edit what should be the main attraction. And while Sergio Mora and Grady Brewer sit on the fringes, guys like Forrest Griffin and Michael Bisping have futures and fan-followings.
And if Griffin and Bisping are what MMA is about, then the opposite is true for Ray Mercer and Kimbo Slice. A bout that has drawn so much buzz must, quite simply, either entertain beyond the wildest expectations or go completely ignored. Pitting an aged boxer against a street fighter brings the sort of carnival value that Mia St. John and Butterbean used to carry on boxing pay-per-view undercards. That beauty and beast tandem didn’t necessarily represent their sport – Mercer and Slice shouldn’t be seen as being what MMA is.
And what MMA is, well, is a sport that is truly experiencing a meteoric rise. The cards and fighters entertain, and the marketing has been toward the future. As such, the decision makers in boxing shouldn’t write MMA off as a flash in the pan or human cockfighting, not when the MMA audiences are growing and not when the fighters have less chance of dying in the ring.
The Sweet Science isn’t anywhere close to being at its sunset, but its promoters and networks have a lot of watching, learning and improving to do to make sure that boxing never does approach the day when MMA has it completely eclipsed.
The 10 Count
1. James Toney began his rebuilding process last week, fighting off television and earning his first win since October 2005 with a split decision victory over journeyman Danny Batchelder.
“I’m not done,” Toney told the San Jose Mercury News. “I just looked that way.”
Toney was coming off of two losses to heavyweight Samuel Peter – the first, a split decision that some thought should have gone to “Lights Out,” the second, a unanimous decision in which Peter – gasp – out-boxed the boxing wizard. Toney’s last win was nearly 20 months ago, a clear outpointing of Dominick Guinn.
More than any of his recent appearances, the Batchelder bout shows that if Toney is to make one last thrust at heavyweight contention, he must get in shape. Although Toney weighed in at 229, which was less than what he had tipped the scales at for his past five bouts, his ideal poundage should be the lean 217 that he showed up at for his 2003 stoppage of Evander Holyfield.
2. Arthur Abraham returned Saturday from the broken jaw he suffered in September at the hands of Edison Miranda, scoring a technical knockout over undefeated challenger Sebastien Demers.
Abraham floored Demers toward the end of the third round with a big right hand, and, though Demers got up, the referee waved the bout off as the final seconds of the stanza ticked away.
Abraham has now successfully defended his International Boxing Federation middleweight title four times, with decisions over Shannan Taylor, Kofi Jantuah and the aforementioned Miranda. With many calling for Jermain Taylor to defend the legitimate 160-pound championship against Kelly Pavlik, Abraham should look toward a unification bout against World Boxing Association titlist Felix Sturm, who also fights out of Germany.
3. Meanwhile to the east, Steve Cunningham once again went to Poland to face Krzysztof Wlodarczyk, but this time the Philadelphian returned with the IBF cruiserweight trinket in hand.
Cunningham dropped a split decision to Wlodarczyk in November, a bout that included widely divergent scores – two judges had it 116-112 and 115-113 for Wlodarczyk, the third saw it 119-109 for Cunningham. This time, though, Cunningham picked up a majority decision, a win that brings him toward the front of an exciting, competitive division.
4. Dancing with the Stars Update: Laila Ali came up short in the season finale of ABC’s celebrity dancing series – the 55 points garnered on Monday night by Ali and partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy landed the duo in third place, and that’s where they remained after audience voting.
The pair’s mambo went well, pulling in 29 points, but their freestyle dancing received less love, earning a score of 26 points. That left Ali behind pop music singer Joey Fatone and the show’s eventual winner, Olympic short track speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno.
5. Speaking of the Ali surname, George Foreman claims in his new memoir, “God in My Corner,” that he consumed drugged water prior to his famous Rumble in the Jungle with Muhammad Ali.
“I almost spit it out … Man, I know this water has medicine in it,” Foreman said in an excerpt printed on FOXSports.com. “I climbed into the ring with that medicinal taste still lingering in my mouth … After the third round, I was as tired as if I had fought 15 rounds. What’s going on here? Did someone slip a drug in my water?”
6. In related news, Wladimir Klitschko just bought a new book.
7. Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Former junior flyweight champion Michael Carbajal was arrested May 24 on charges that he allegedly threatened and intimidated a Phoenix police officer, according to the Associated Press.
Carbajal, who was also cited for a liquor violation, was seen walking early that morning in a vacant lot with an open bottle of rum, a police spokesman said. The Hall of Famer allegedly threatened to kill one of the police officers and was then taken to jail, authorities said.
Carbajal is currently free on bond. In January, a jury acquitted Carbajal on charges of felony assault stemming from accusations that he had allegedly punched a friend who he thought had broken a videotape of his old bouts.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: Former 160- and 168-pound titlist Chris Eubank was arrested May 22 in London for disturbing the peace on the same day he was to appear in court for a case stemming from a similar February incident, according to numerous reports from across the pond.
Three months ago, Eubank was charged with disturbing the peace after he was seen driving a large truck on which he had placed a banner protesting Prince Harry’s impending deployment to Iraq with British troops.
Eubank’s truck made a return appearance last week – this time, it included a message to incoming prime minister Gordon Brown asking for a withdrawal from Iraq. A smaller sign came with a disclaimer: “This is not a protest.”
9. Boxers Behaving Badly, part three: Troubled former featherweight titlist Scott Harrison – who has accumulated quite the rap sheet of late – was arrested last week for allegedly taking part in a brawl at a Spanish brothel, according to various British news outlets.
Incidentally, Harrison was scheduled to appear at court in Glasgow, Scotland, that same day for a hearing related to an arrest last year from when Harrison allegedly assaulted a police officer.
10. Gosh, remember when Harrison used to get paid to fight?
David P. Greisman may be reached at fightingwords1@gmail.com
