Tweet
Boxing Writer is won over by MMA/UFC.
2006 will be remembered as the year Mixed Martial Arts arrived—like a tsunami. Citing the gaudy Pay-Per-View numbers, the success of the reality show The Ultimate Fighter (TUF), or that enormous billboard of Chuck and Tito near Time Square, doesn’t do the phenomena justice. It’s here, it’s the zeitgeist.
This elicits various feelings in me that need explaining. Boxing is my first love and an ongoing addiction that I plan never to kick. No sporting event comes close to a great boxing match. In spite of the game being virtually ignored by the mainstream sports press—and thus the vast majority of sports fans—I know I chose the best sport to write about. Nothing else offers such drama, psychology, colorful characters, and heaping portions of purity and filth to dive into. And as elemental as boxing may appear, you never become to smart for it. (A gander at my fight predictions will bear this out. If I’m batting .500, I’m probably up on my colleagues.)
That said, 2006 was also the year I officially became hooked on MMA—and this only matters because I am one of millions who caught the bug. I had previously watched most of the free stuff on Spike and FSN; this year I finally broke down and ordered PPV’s (Hughes-Penn II, Saturday’s Liddell-Ortiz II, and I was on the fence for Pride’s Shockwave but my wife’s New Year’s plans sidetracked me).
I fit the profile of many MMA newbies: The first season of TUF was like that free sample of drugs a pusher uses to hook an eventual crackhead. I found myself engaging in constant MMA chatter, emailing, texting, even rapping with strangers about it on the train.
But whenever I do this, an internal dialogue results, because I can’t think about MMA without feeling a pang of guilt—like I’m cheating on my old lady.
I obviously want to see boxing not just survive but thrive. And I truly believe the success of one need not suggest the demise of the other. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t mind seeing boxing suffer, that has me thinking, “Ha! Good! Look what you’ve done to yourself, you self-mutilating heathens!” Maybe boxing ought to have all of its bones broken in order for them to grow back stronger? Maybe that’s the only way it will find itself? I’m sure the long-suffering ever-loyal boxing fan will be there when it’s finally healed.
For the real boxing fan has already been through it all: the stalemate/pissing contest between Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya, which is ultimately an unwelcome golden shower in the face of you know who. He has endured HBO—the self-proclaimed “Heart & Soul of Boxing”—counter-programming Showtime and, whenever possible, announcing the other network’s fight results so that those who TiVo it or watch on tape-delay are screwed. He tuned in to B.A.D. despite all those Paul Williams Specials that were appetizing to only the fighter’s powerful advisor, Al Haymon. Christ, the fan didn’t even hit “mute” when the accompanying babble of Max Kellerman, Fran Charles and Lennox Lewis spewed forth—some of the worst stuff since Dennis Miller was doing Monday Night Football. Yeah, he stood by the game he loves despite nearly all of today’s promoters being no more than glorified booking agents. Booking agents who occasionally perform a ritualistic quid pro quo with the media called a press conference—free steak sandwiches for some hype. And let’s not speak of the crooked sanctioning bodies, shady state commissions, and lame PPVs that have driven away all but the most rabid fans.
Comment