Its not a very appealing fight for Usyk, risk/reward wise. I hope he does the right thing and finally gives Kabayel a chance though. If he goes out like this it'll end his career on a sour note, which is a shame because he could have retired a few fights ago without anyone protesting too much.
this isnt bj penn the legend in mma in the street getting KO by a paisa in east la
9 years removed from his last win, drunk, and asking a guy several weight classes above him to hit him in the face repeatedly....lol
UNFORTUNATELY, ----ricom and many others, havent been able to become the brock lesnar in boxing.
Boxing is definitely more difficult than MMA overall, but its apples to oranges really. MMA is a hybrid sport that was founded on being an arena for fighters from any discipline to come in and prove themselves in a free for all environment that allows techniques from pretty much everything. So by its inherent nature its going to have people transitioning into it more so than boxing, which is much more limited and specialized.
Also Brock, WWE star or not, was legit, he would have caved Fury and Usyks heads in back to back in a matter of minutes under any ruleset that allowed him to wrestle.
There was a time when shit like this might have mattered to the whole boxing vs MMA dynamic, but that time is long past.
Both sports are poor right now with MMA at a real low point in the last few years. I started watching it in the early 00s and this year has been the least ive ever watched.
surprised that kickboxing never took off with the American market yet ufc succeeded
There were a few reasons
MMA was full of elite American fighters pretty much from the outset and the UFC was almost entirely focused on the US market in its growth stages, while K-1 was a Japanese company, did not run many events in the US and there were very few good American fighters around for them to market. They had Carter Williams who was decent but not elite, and they had Bob Sapp who was very marketable but more of a gimmick, plus he went to MMA as well.
Another thing is The Ultimate Fighter show did a LOT for the UFCs growth, so many people got into it because of that show.
I would say globally K-1/kickboxing was still bigger than MMA up to the early 00s. The shift happened through the mid/late 00s.
Its an embarrassment to the sport and whats more its completely fucking needless. Its not like this was a big fight on a commercial level or anything. All risk with zero reward for the boxer and the sport of boxing. You either dominate and nobody cares because its whats supposed to happen, or you struggle and it looks terrible.
HW kickboxing is actually pretty damn weak now compared to what it was in the 90s/00s, Rico aside.
I would say for a decent chunk of time it had the hottest HW division in all combat sports. Tons of big names and they all fought each other constantly.
I can acknowledge that the U.S. doesn’t produce heavyweights anymore, despite historically having the greatest heavyweights ever. What they still do produce are the best p4p boxers during every single era. Whereas the uk produces utter shyttt and always has.
The US has SIX TIMES the population of the UK, with 40 million blacks and 70 million Hispanics who make up the ENTIRETY of good boxers from there. Your majority population is fucking useless. The US also doesnt have soccer sucking up the lions share of athletic talent from roughly LW to LHW.
The UK punches well above its weight in boxing and in sports in general, its a great sporting nation, and you're weirdly salty for some reason. You should be thankful as a boxing fan because if it wasnt for the UK this sport would lose some of its biggest stars, promoters, fights and attendances overnight and become even more niche than it currently is.
You're not even from America anyway, if you were you would have said it earlier instead of being evasive. You're probably from fucking Liechtenstein or something talking about the UK being irrelevant and guys like Fury, Dubois and AJ being shit.
He deserves all the criticism he gets for fighting a non-boxer when people have wanted him to fight Kabayel for a while now, and then looking bad on top of that which just needlessly makes the sport look bad.
Another completely valid criticism of his HW career (although its not entirely his fault) is how much of it is made up of rematches.
That fact that you’re bragging about a slew of non champions in the hw division only proves my point. Enjoy
your irrelevant status.
Who are the best HWs from your country? what fights are scheduled to happen there?
Project much? Uk is completely irrelevant and at the bottom of the barrel in terms of countries that participate in boxing. The uk falls behind USA , Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Japan. You’re only on par with Ireland and Australia who also $uck at boxing.
You sound like a sad salty obsessive ex girlfriend. Must make you seethe with jealous rage that Brits, while apparently being "irrelevant" to boxing, get to enjoy a steady stream of legit HW fighters representing them, and hosts some of the biggest fights in the sport while wherever you're from has like 5 pro boxers in the whole country.
Reminds me of that weird Kiwi dude on here who kept talking about "overhyped British HWs" and hyping up Parker, only for Parker to get sparked by a fringe top 5 UK HW.
At least he had the balls to rep his nation though, unlike you.
Tell me one other sport, where the guy from the other sport can come and make it look competitive against top guy.
How many rounds would Usyk last against Rico in kickboxing fight?
How many games would a table tennis player win againat top 10 ranked tennis player in a tennis match?
Yeah its not a great look tbh. Its one thing to say "okay Usyk (or Fury) would lose in kickboxing or MMA, but in boxing they cant be beat", but its something else when kickboxers and MMA guys are fighting them in straight up boxing and giving them hell.
FWIW I do think the lack of power in both Usyk and Fury is a big part of it. There are guys that have lost to them who stylistically could probably handle Rico or Ngannou quicker because they can bäng.
Its frustrating because these stupid crossover fights have no reason to happen in the first place.
The whole AJ was better pre-Ruiz thing is a myth. We had already seen plenty of vulnerabilities in him before that fight. He is obviously past his prime now but in 2021 he was technically and athletically as good as he ever was.
As for Fury, the Wilder fights caused him to be briefly elevated to some mythical all time head to head status, but in truth Wilder being so limited just made him look better than he really is. Remember that version of Fury had come back from a 3 year "retirement" where he had ballooned up to like 400lbs too, then even before the fake retirement you had stuff like the McDermott robbery and him getting put on his arse by Steve Cunningham, so when was his actual prime really?
Please. He tried twice against Usyk and failed miserably both times. He’s no one to clean up the mess if a fighter significantly better than him. Matter of fact, the entire uk threw their best at Usyk twice and they all failed. Kind of embarrassing that a Dutch kickboxer outdid all of England.
So which small irrelevant country that is far worse at boxing than the UK do you come from exactly?
This is one of the many reasons I fucking hate these gimmick crossover fights. Theres always a risk it ends up making the boxer look bad.
We are now in a position where the two best HWs of their era have BOTH been in contentious arguable robbery situations against a guy from a different fucking sport. Its just fucking embarrassing and I think will always cloud the division when its looked back on.
And while Usyk may have gotten old, he was fighting a guy less than 2 years younger than him who has almost 80 fights worth of mileage from kickboxing.
To think around 2018-19 before AJ got banana skinned by Ruiz this would have been the biggest HW PPV fight since Lennox/Tyson. The second biggest would have been AJ/Fury. Such a fucking waste.
without Mcgregor the sport would never have been close to the Mainstream
They were already breaking a mil on PPVs multiple times long before Conor. He actually showed up a little after their original boom period cooled off. It was TUF, Brock, GSP, Anderson, UFC 100 etc that caused things to blow up initially.
only 20 years in and everything is already going down and they are already exceeding all the bad stuff that is happening in boxing.
Pretty much agree with this. Practically every advantage MMA had over boxing when I first got into it and has long gone by now. The manageable easy to follow amount of cards and divisions, constant stacked cards, high finish rates, the greater emphasis on heavier weights, the usually strong HW and cruiser divisions, the high amount of American stars etc etc.
Its oversaturated corporate slop these days.
Rico is a great kickboxer and athlete but yeah, pure boxing wise hes not up to much imo. Hes fairly pillow fisted and his kickboxing game is balanced rather than boxing heavy.
Its just a weird fucking fight. Its not like Rico is even a huge name. Very disappointing to see Usyk waste his time with this. To think there were people who would have criticized him for fighting a guy like Wardley or Itauma too, Rico wouldnt last 5 rounds against either.
Do they have stars at the level of Mayweather, Pamcan, Canelo, Joshua, Ryan Garcia?
The biggest non-gimmick combat sports PPVs of the last decade have all been Conor fights. His fight vs Khabib did more buys than Canelo/GGG 1+2 combined. Ironically the biggest boxing match of the last decade involved Conor too.
As far as active names go - Usyk, Fury, AJ, Canelo are genuine global stars, but outside of those 4 it starts to go more in MMAs favour, even today when, like I said, their star power is at a relative low point.
Most people can't even name their champions and they only have 8.
On average their belt holders are way more known than boxing belt holders, even now at a relative low point in star power, even including their female champs.
Not sure what the play is here.
Unless Hearn foresees the Zuffa deals leading to pressure to increase UFC fighter pay and he has the opportunity to buy in to these fighters before it happens.
The UFC White House card line up is supposed to be announced any second now. It could be that Aspinall is trying to get Dana to sign him vs Jones for that card, and is using Eddie and the threat of going off to boxing like Ngannou did to apply more pressure.
I was an Aspinall fan when Jon was blatantly ducking him but he has really shat the bed, gone off track and lost a lot of support since the Gane fight. Way too much talk and drama, not enough fighting.
Rico the greatest Kickboxer ever is the most casual and laughable statement someone could ever make. Not even close to be the greatest Heavyweight. He dominated a weak era and is the equivalent of Klitschko. When he fought a shot to pieces Badr Hari he still struggled and got almost finished in a different era Rico would most likely been beaten in every second match at the top level. That being said that dude can't punch at all.
He did dominate a weak era compared to the 90s/00s but he would have been in the mix in any era. Its still impressive as fuck going undefeated as long as he did in a sport where there isnt really cherry picking and you sometimes have to compete multiple times in one night. Hes easily one of the best pure athletes at HW in any combat sport over the past 10 years too.
Obviously none of that makes this fight any less stupid though.
He never had an identifiable prime because he didn't start fighting elite level competition until he was a decade into his career and approaching his mid 30s.