I love both sports but I can totally understand this viewpoint. There is an appeal to the purity and simplicity of boxing, nowhere to hide, no plan B, its basically rock vs rock whereas MMA is rock, paper, scissors. Its a lot more aesthetically pleasing too whereas MMA is quite messy and chaotic.
I think the appeal of MMA though is its the ultimate arena for proving who the best fighters are. Obviously there are still rules but 90+% of the techniques from basically every unarmed martial art are allowed. Its by far the closest combat sport to basically putting two guys in a room unarmed and seeing who would walk out, and that lends a certain weight and legitimacy to it and to the fighters imo.
Definitely a bad idea to grapple in the street if you can avoid it. But in a 1 on 1 situation generally if you have a grappler vs a pure striker the guy that wants to close distance and grab is gonna come out on top.
Obviously MMA fighters are a mix of the two though. I doubt most would bother grappling on the street unless the other person happened to be a boxer.
... (irrelevant) ...
Boxing is just another combative art to go along with the many. There is no 1 perfect art. If you watch boxing, it is because you prefer this "art" over the others. Nothing wrong with that.
I love the MMA guys that say, yeah, but you can kick and take down. I say, "yeah, but I don't care about any of that". I prefer all standup, punch for punch type of combat. There is something about seeing "masters" of 1 art go at it than watching MMA where guys are doing back flips and all kinds of stupid stuff that looks cool when it lands, but is also luck at times. Like landing a 1 in a million, spinning, back flip, side to side, round house head kick bs. It looks wild, it is wild and it makes for great 5 second clips, but otherwise, it's a ****show if you ask me, lol.
I like seeing two who attempt to master their 1 craft go at it and see who can exploit who better.
... (thus) ... https://www.boxingarts.com/culture/
Lewis was not the first (original) six-heads ...
... I trained with a guy at King's Gym in Oakland named "six heads" ...
... back in the late 1980s ...
... but I can't remember his name ...
... (it'll come to me though) ...