Steve Deane: UFC has boxing on the ropes
Cameron Quertier and Joesph Spiers battle it out in the 69kgs B Class bout, during the ICNZ18 MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Championship held at North Shore Events Centre, Auckland. Photo / Brett Phibbs
The way things are going, you wouldn't bet against MMA being the dominant global fight sport in 50 years' time. Hell, it might be the only global combat sport by then. Designed to find the most dominant fighter on the planet - whatever their skill set - MMA has the potential to render other combat sports irrelevant.
Boxing's predominance is certainly under threat. Professional boxing has been ailing for a long time. Its rich history and rare kind of sporting poetry won't be enough to keep MMA at bay.
Genuinely memorable boxing bouts are few and far between these days, buried under a mountain of dross.
The biggest boxing occasions still capture the imagination - as Shane Cameron's title fight against Danny Green will - but it is a rare contest that doesn't require interest levels to be maintained via a punch-drunk playbook of pre-fight publicity tricks.
Thanks to the skills of David Tua and Cameron there has been a revival in New Zealand, but even those successes owe much to the canny efforts of promoters such as David Higgins and Dean Lonergan.
With his Fight for Life cards, Lonergan has cleverly tapped into a mainstream sporting audience. But having set up a fight between two reality TV floozies in his last show, he has stretched the concept of celebrity fighting as entertainment to the bounds of decency.
His promotions prove the appetite for combat sports remains vast, but the lengths he has gone to to make them successful reveal a sport laid waste by shysters and pimps.
MMA, via the increasingly all-powerful UFC, is already stepping into the void. The Herald's inquiries this week discovered a sport shaking off the negativity of a bloody early imprint on the public consciousness, and spreading inexorably across the globe.
Whereas boxing has long followed a model that pursues big paydays for prime prize fighters at all costs, MMA, under the UFC banner, puts a premium on entertaining fans. And where boxing has become bedevilled by the multiple fly-by-night organisations masquerading as bodies worthy of handing out world titles, the UFC has consolidated its standing as MMA's premier body by consuming its major rivals one by one.
Monopolies are seldom a good thing long term, but the UFC's dominance sure beats trying to figure out the difference between the WBO, WBA, WBC and WWF.
The global rise of the UFC is reflected in the surge in the popularity of MMA in this country. The local scene is humming but, in the absence of legislation, relies on self-regulation.
The Boxing & Wrestling Act that oversees fighting sports in this country explicitly excludes martial arts. That's an antiquated anomaly. Mixed martial arts fighting is the combat sport of choice of a new generation. It's not coming, it's here.
"Big" Jim York has been fighting in the smaller orgs before Mark Hunt switched to MMA. Also, I would have thought "Hot" Rod MacSwain would have got a mention.
The Ukraine brothers sell out Soccer Stadiums 60'000 seats On any given day. Boxers from Japan have over 1hundred million viewers when the favorite boxers fight. Same goes for Acelino Freitas from Brazil boxer had over 1 million people watch him get married live on tv. In reality ufc has nothing on boxing or mma in general.
You can look at the Nevada state athletic commissions tally and see while boxing continues to set record numbers mma has fallen every year, since 2008. Mma daily headline 2011 abissmal year for mma. It has had it's peak and I think it's luster has already worn out. And not to mention Mayweather jr or Manny Pacqiuao. The numbers are incredible.
I hold amateur wrestling titles in New Zealand and was part of a professional fight organisation in the late eighties and early nineties, as a ring announcer and fighter and I'm yet to be involved with any fighting sport that offers the spectator top (or at least high) class athletes on every main card.
MMA has chosen to get the matches right & even if the "entertainment value" is not quite as high as the UFC likes, they are often very high quality fights with enough physical action to satisfy the "bloodlust" and technical to satisfy the purist.
Pro wrestling has turned almost all wrestling into a TV soap opera while boxing has no real stars any longer, including Tua or Cameron. Honestly don't think the Cameron/Green fight will rate as high as you suggest, Green is too good and Cameron isn't really good enough.
The only grumble about the features is that our history in MMA pre dates James Te Huna or Mark Hunt with Ray "Sugarfoot" Sefo being one the pioneers in big money fights in Japan & adored by the crowds, but didn't rate a mention.