Who Would Win Between a Boxer and a MMA?

LOng overdue, IMO.
Cheers

Any time someone asks one of these ridiculous questions, I should just link to this post.

You pretty much nailed it.
I really think that with his stand up ability,Anderson Silva would do well in boxing and i would have picked him over Roy Jones when they were hyping a fight between the two a year or two ago.

I agree it’s kind of ludicrous to compare the two sports’ competitors like that, although it’s only natural to expect that fans of either sport will wonder how their favorites would perform against the boys on the next channel.

That said, we really don’t know a few things that we would need to know in order to even begin to answer this question. The biggest being: just how effective of a puncher is a boxer without his gloves on? For sure he can hit harder, but what happens to his defense when he loses the big shields that those gloves present? And if he’s without that aspect of his defense, what happens to his style? Mike Tyson would be more adversely affected (defensively, guys..just talking defense) by the lack of gloves than someone like Hearns, just due to how they hold their hands and the nature of their defensive techniques.

Anyways, I think it is pretty clear that the MMA fighter is more well-rounded, so you’d have to bet on him if athletic ability and overall skill are comparable. But boxers could be a whale of a lot more dangerous than people give them credit for. It would be interesting to find some of these things out, but you can’t really use people as guinea pigs.

that old boxers, past their boxing primes, sometimes go into MMA, not young ones?

At boxing a boxer will win. At MMA an MMA might win – if he doesn’t get the f*ck knocked out. Simple. End of,

Guys, the real question is “Who wins a race – a dragster or an Indy car?”

But seriously, basketball and football skill positions have the best athletes. Those guys could be good at anything they set their mind to – and if you ask them what they would do differently if they could do it all over, they say play baseball! haha.

It’s “agenda”. Just sayin’.

But the argument’s logic is unassailable. I can’t think of one MMA fighter who could stand and trade with a good boxer. It wouldn’t even be close.

after my first entry, but I think there are a few things to remember when even considering such a question.

First, MMA fighters train at boxing. Boxers do not train at the various components that make up MMA (aside from boxing, obviously). This doesn’t mean that MMA fighters are automatically superior to boxers, but what it does mean is the baseline ability for comparison would seem to favor the MMA fighter.

But it only seems that way…

MMA fighters use 4-5oz gloves, while boxers use gloves twice(?) that size. The impact of this difference canNOT be overstated. In MMA, if you eat fifteen hard punches to the head, you’re already on the stretcher en route to the hospital. If a boxer eats fifteen hard punches to the head, he’s probably closing in on the bell. For one round. Out of twelve.

In MMA, you can’t just plan to absorb massive quantities of headshots. If you do, you lose. In boxing, there’s really no way around getting hit in the head (unless you’re Manny Pacquiao). The size of the gloves makes an apples-to-apples comparison of skillset or ability kind of ridiculous. Pretty much the same as comparing an MLB veteran’s power with a regulation wood bat hitting regulation baseballs, to that of a softball star’s power with a juiced-up aluminum bat hitting extra-hardened softballs. There’s just not enough common ground to even begin the debate.

If for NO other reason than the above, any comparison of boxers and MMA fighters, and their respective abilities regarding hand-striking and overall combat ability, needs to be based almost entirely on cross-over results. Take the MMA fighters who have boxed as one group, and take the boxers who have fought MMA as the other. Normalize (to the best of your ability) the skill level of each group and see what comes up. The big problem with this approach is there simply isn’t enough of a sample to even get the hint of an analysis started. We need a few hundred fights on each side of the ledger before we really have a good idea.