By Steven Marrocco, MMAjunkie.com
Many top MMA fighters love boxing, but even they admit that the sport is on the ropes.
This past weekend's Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey fight came with a fraction of the hype for a long-anticipated showdown between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. And when it was finished, fans slapped their collective foreheads.
Clottey threw 399 punches to Pacquiao's 1,231 and spent the majority of the fight blocking the welterweight champion's blows. The fight was so drab commentator Jim Lampley resorted to sound effects during Pacquiao flurries, with shouts of Bang! Bang! Bang! dotting the eighth round.
UFC 111 headliners Dan Hardy and Frank Mir said they still support the sweet science, but its hiccups are wearing them thin.
"I've always been a huge fan of boxing … but as far as what boxing's doing, I think it's no statement to say that it's been on a decline due to its own results, and also the fact of what the UFC is now," Mir today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) in a conference call promoting his interim-title fight with Shane Carwin on March 27.
Hardy said he watched the Pacquiao fight in a sports bar and was not happy with what he saw.
"I've always been a huge fan of boxing, and I'm very selective about what boxers I watch and what fights I watch," said Hardy, who fights welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre at UFC 111. "I would say unfortunately, 50 or 60 percent of the time I've watched a boxing match that I've been looking forward to, I kind of feel like I've been robbed of 45 minutes of my life."
The UFC welterweight contender said the boxing ring allows fighters to hide and avoid the fight. But he also put the blame on Clottey for refusing to engage.
"Clottey didn't really want to fight Pacquiao," he said. "He didn't come to win. It was kind of like my fight with (Akihiro) Gono, my first fight in the UFC. The guy didn't come to win, and they're not my kind of fighters.
"I like guys that don't mind taking a risk and putting their neck on the line just (for) the adrenaline rush for that fight. Unfortunately, there aren't that many boxers out there who will do that now. I think that's why MMA is coming up so fast because people need to see that intensity in the fight that I think boxing's losing."
Mir said boxing's decline has forced the sport to put together substandard match-ups because there are few bankable stars in its divisions.
"They're trying to move guys into different weight classes to make superfights," he said. "There's really no weight division that has anything going on in it. If you look at boxing as far as (the) mainstream, I think you're hard pressed now to even ask people who's in the heavyweight division in boxing, which has always been one of the premier weight classes for the sport of boxing.
"Right now, if it wasn't for the two or three superstars that they have in their sport willing to fight each other even through they're not in the same weight class I don't think you'd have any boxing matches going on whatsoever."
Most boxing observers pin boxing's future success on Pacquiao vs. Mayweather, a fight that was supposed to happen this month before it was derailed by the bickering of opposing promoters. After defeating Clottey, Pacquiao said he wants to fight Mayweather, but he doesn't think the brash fighter will agree to face him.
A myriad of less-than-stellar options await the welterweight stars. Mayweather is scheduled to take on Shane Mosley in May.
This past Saturday night, Carwin was hanging out with his 20-day-old daughter, his son, and his wife a familiar routine so he didn't watch the fight. He planned to catch it later.
Despite its shameful reviews, Pacquiao vs. Clottey promoter Bob Arum said he expects the event to do between 700,000 and 900,000 pay-per-view buys (a mark the UFC rarely reaches), which will make the headliners wealthy men.
Carwin, however, believes UFC 111's pay-per-view numbers could equal the boxing event's take.
"Yeah, I think it's very liable," he said. "UFC 111, it's a big card, one of the biggest cards the UFC has had in a while. There's some intruguing fights on there. Not only the main and co-main (events), you have (Thiago) Alves fighting (Jon) Fitch again, so I think the numbers will be right up there with [Pacquiao].
"Pacquiao is boxing's main guy right now, and the UFC has a number of main guys and fights that they can fill out their cards."
Source: sports.yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment