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ok lets see where to start, generally speaking cauliflower ear is a result of rips under the skin filling with blood, this is most notable with wrestling or grappling. being punched can cause it sure BUT the mma fighters of today DO NOT get it from punches. i have been training grappling arts, (bjj, judo, sambo, and wrestling since i was a kid), as well as boxing muay thai, jkd, and tkd as well. i have in more then 30 yrs of training ome of these things never seen a single person get bad ears from getting punched in person.
nobody said anything about you looking for gyms in houston, i simply pointed out that used to be boxing gyms all over the place, now there are very few. houston has about 4 and a population of more then 4 million people, thats not a good ratio. if houston was say austin tx with a population well under 1 mil then sure that might be a good thing. i have attempted to find a gym that will train kids here and none of them are close enough as im not going to drive an hour and a half or so to get to a decent boxing gym for my 7 yr old to train 3 days a week when he can just go to a more well rounded striking art in muay thai closer.
i am a us army ranger, i have 1st hand experience in the hand to hand combat training of the us military and i am telling you they do NOT train boxing any more. sure they have boxing as a a rec sport and a boxing team but then they have a basketball team, a soccer team, a swimming team, power lifting team and so on. the us army trains soldier in pure mma. hell watch the 1st minute of the modern army combatives program intro video and they will tell you the training is based in jiu jitsu, judo and wrestling, boxing and muay thai, kali and the eastern arts.
you consistently bring up the top 10% of fighters but then say "boxers make more money" then wehn i show you how wrong that fact is, you bring up "well the top 10" or what ever. you cant have it both ways man, either your talking about boxers in general or your talking top guys but you cant generalize then fall back on the top guys. and once again those top guys and their pay days (which they generally do not see even 50% of themselves after they pay their legal teams, promoters, corner entourage, and so on.) are a huge reason the sport is dieing, if not already gone. arreola got a title shot, he got beat down and has been regarded as the "great brown hope" i believe is how it was put and yet he makes chump change. i will give you that the top 10 guys in each sport are not equal BUT boxing has been around for much longer and has established itself and corrupted itself long before mma was even concieved as a sport. while boxing was being brought out as a sport mma has been the #1 form of self defense and combat for more then 2000 yrs. (pancrase or pankration is mma and was created by the greeks more then 500 yrs before christ.)
as for toney, he holds the IBA and NABO titles. he IS a heavy weight champion regardless of how you want to try to spin things.
Lot's of old time boxers had cauliflower ear, typically the brawlers who weren't concerned about taking three punches to the head in order to land one. I've watched guys in MMA get punched in the ear and it swells like a plum. The more permanent cases like Randy Couture are a result of repeated blows and grappling. In cases where the ear is still tender, fighters will intentionally hit their opponent on the bad ear because it hurts more. There have been several fights where we've seen ruptured cauliflower ear during a fight. Nasty stuff.
There are fewer boxing gyms because there are fewer live boxing events. Years ago there were arena's all over the country and live fights every Friday night. Television was the catalyst for the drop in attendance, not MMA. Boxing gyms are not a lucrative business. Often, the kids who enter a boxing gym are poor kids from the streets who can't afford to pay for memberships or gear. Many trainers would end up training them for free so long as they were willing to compete in the amateurs. Then you have the ones who join on a monthly basis. They'll train for a few weeks, spar for the first time and when they get their first bloody nose they often don't return. It's the yuppie looking for a better workout who is keeping the boxing gyms open since memberships can be expensive in most major cities.
You can call Toney a champ if you want, but he isn't recognized by the main sanctioning bodies. Does boxing have a problem with all of these sanctioning bodies, sure. But MMA has several different champions as well between 7 or 8 different organizations. The UFC HW champ is Lesnar with a record of 5-1. How does a guy like Lesnar not have to fight his way to the top of the rankings in order to fight for the title? He was given a title shot after what, 2 fights? Where's the credibility there. He was given a title shot based on his size, image, and prior celebrity status and reputation from WWE and the NFL. So say what you want about Toney, at least he earned his belts over the course of his career, and there is less shame in an over the hill Toney holding a belt than there is in some freakshow whose already been exposed as overrated and overhyped holding one.
Ok, so you don't like me mentioning top ten fighters salaries, let's go top 100 then. Either way, boxing is not hurting and is not dead. That was my initial argument here. You came here posting that it is dying, but the strongest indicator to refute that would be money. There will always be a substantial audience for boxing, and neither boxing or MMA is going to fade out anytime soon. It's the MMA crowd who consistently antagonizes boxing fans about the demise of boxing, and I see nothing to indicate that boxing is in any sort of trouble. If anything, boxing has gained some ground since the popularity of MMA. It forced promoters to make more competitive fights people want to see. Enjoy your MMA and I'll enjoy my boxing. The world is a big enough place for each.
so far i have seen 2 people with ear problems and one was simply because he didnt drain the ear before the fight after getting while training only days before. and its no worse to have that ear pop as it is to have someone bite it off.
see you confuse me with others or something i never one said mma is THE REASON boxing is dieing, but you do make a strong case for it killing itself. boxing is an established sport that has been around for 100 yrs or more without a ton of changes to the system, and of the changes it has made very few are for the better. if TV is the reason for the death of al the boxing gyms, then boxing truely is dieing as the masses do not see boxing on tv regularly enough to peek interest. sure there is hbo boxing, and showtime boxing hell a espn boxing CLASSICS channel but then the showbox has worse ratings then strikeforce on showtime (which are not very good themselves), and espn has the classics so people can watch the hay day of boxing, when ali faced foreman or haggler holmes or what ever but that doesnt do much for boxing today. i mean hell i can watch bonanza from the 1950s and 60s but that doesnt do much for clint eastwood now. hbo is the only channel that has any ratings for boxing and the best they did in 2009 was 1.6m while strikeforce on the much less watched showtime did about 500k. keep in mind that is boxings big dog (outside of ppvs they have every now and then) and strike force in 2009 was like a red headed stepchild of mma. so if tv killed the boxing gym, and the lack of boxing gyms killed the live fight, and people are not watching it on tv like they used to then explain how boxing is doing so well as you seem to think it is?
as for titles, see boxing has sanctioning bodies, while mma has promotions. it is simply due to the age of mma in the world of main stream sports. its kind of like if don king (the dana white of boxing) where to have a stable of fighters who would only fight each other and he had his own belts. the don king heavyweight of the world so to speak. as for lesnar, that man is a beast! pure and simple. he is a freak athlete, with great speed, size strength, work ethic and desire. brock lesnar could easily put ANY boxer on his back side. he doesnt have great technique (other then those multiple ncaa division 1 wrestling championship skills) but his technique gets better each and every time you see him. i mean they didnt even make gloves big enough to fit his meat hooks. when he started they had to take xxxl gloves, cut them open and stitch material in the middle to fit his hands, yet he can run a 40 yd dash in 4.75 seconds. to put that in perspective the AVERAGE running back in the nfl runs about 4.45 sec 40s.
bottom line, while boxing is not completely dead it is hurting really bad, not solely from mma but mma definitely has something to do with it. mostly boxing has done it to itself. between over priced tickets, lack of traing facilities, dodging fighters, over paid management and unrealistically inflated payouts to a small % of fighters the shape of boxing is looking about as good as the shape of roy nelsons belly right about now, while full and plump, not the way it should look in the world in which it lives.
and yes i do actually watch some boxing now and then, but i will not pay the stupid PPV prices charged. maybe if those top name fighters took less money and the ppv where cheaper they might even get more viewer ship. maybe get back on cbs/nbc/abc for once.
I noticed my comment about boxing facing elimination from the OLYMPICS went ignored.
I guess I'm the only one that sees that as a severe blow to the sport.
Sorry, but this is the first I've heard about the possibility of boxing being eliminated from the Olympics. As a matter of fact, early this year the IOC was considering adding women to the boxing category.
I do know there are concerns among boxers and trainers fighting overseas and getting screwed on the hometown cooking decisions like what happened in Korea, but that was 22 years ago.
Also, a lot of boxers coming up today do not want to hone their skills in the amateurs, compete for the Olympics without getting paid. They're in a hurry to turn pro and start making money while overlooking the advantages to winning an Olympic medal as a promotion tool for their career. The same way the NBA is recruiting talent straight out of high school, boxing promoters and managers are looking for the next big prospect and trying to lure them in before they have a chance to go to Olympic trials.
so far i have seen 2 people with ear problems and one was simply because he didnt drain the ear before the fight after getting while training only days before. and its no worse to have that ear pop as it is to have someone bite it off.
see you confuse me with others or something i never one said mma is THE REASON boxing is dieing, but you do make a strong case for it killing itself. boxing is an established sport that has been around for 100 yrs or more without a ton of changes to the system, and of the changes it has made very few are for the better. if TV is the reason for the death of al the boxing gyms, then boxing truely is dieing as the masses do not see boxing on tv regularly enough to peek interest. sure there is hbo boxing, and showtime boxing hell a espn boxing CLASSICS channel but then the showbox has worse ratings then strikeforce on showtime (which are not very good themselves), and espn has the classics so people can watch the hay day of boxing, when ali faced foreman or haggler holmes or what ever but that doesnt do much for boxing today. i mean hell i can watch bonanza from the 1950s and 60s but that doesnt do much for clint eastwood now. hbo is the only channel that has any ratings for boxing and the best they did in 2009 was 1.6m while strikeforce on the much less watched showtime did about 500k. keep in mind that is boxings big dog (outside of ppvs they have every now and then) and strike force in 2009 was like a red headed stepchild of mma. so if tv killed the boxing gym, and the lack of boxing gyms killed the live fight, and people are not watching it on tv like they used to then explain how boxing is doing so well as you seem to think it is?
as for titles, see boxing has sanctioning bodies, while mma has promotions. it is simply due to the age of mma in the world of main stream sports. its kind of like if don king (the dana white of boxing) where to have a stable of fighters who would only fight each other and he had his own belts. the don king heavyweight of the world so to speak. as for lesnar, that man is a beast! pure and simple. he is a freak athlete, with great speed, size strength, work ethic and desire. brock lesnar could easily put ANY boxer on his back side. he doesnt have great technique (other then those multiple ncaa division 1 wrestling championship skills) but his technique gets better each and every time you see him. i mean they didnt even make gloves big enough to fit his meat hooks. when he started they had to take xxxl gloves, cut them open and stitch material in the middle to fit his hands, yet he can run a 40 yd dash in 4.75 seconds. to put that in perspective the AVERAGE running back in the nfl runs about 4.45 sec 40s.
bottom line, while boxing is not completely dead it is hurting really bad, not solely from mma but mma definitely has something to do with it. mostly boxing has done it to itself. between over priced tickets, lack of traing facilities, dodging fighters, over paid management and unrealistically inflated payouts to a small % of fighters the shape of boxing is looking about as good as the shape of roy nelsons belly right about now, while full and plump, not the way it should look in the world in which it lives.
and yes i do actually watch some boxing now and then, but i will not pay the stupid PPV prices charged. maybe if those top name fighters took less money and the ppv where cheaper they might even get more viewer ship. maybe get back on cbs/nbc/abc for once.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree here. Boxing is not in any sort of trouble and all of the ills you've listed are the same challenges that MMA are faced with. Plus MMA has the added challenge of...over-hyped PPV events that disappiont fans--seriously check the MMA board on other sites, over-hyped fighters who come in with name recognition because of their WWE, NFL, or "street credit", and get instant title shots and six figure paydays even though they suck, and more flash than substance.
I'm a boxing fan, in a boxing forum right where I belong. If MMA is so wonderful, why come over to the boxing forum to trash talk it? Honestly, that's trolling. You're completely ignoring valid points made by boxing fans and spewing the same old rhetoric. It's really pointless. It's the equivalent of me going into a Chevy forum and bashing Chevrolet while singing praises of Ford. Do you really expect to win over the hearts and minds of boxing fans or are you just looking to talk shyt?
what valid points have you made? i have only seen you say that boxing is alive and well because the fighters make a ton of money. you also made the point that there are less gyms because there are less live fights, and there are less live fights because of TV but refuse to face the fact that the fewer gyms, the less chance boxers have as there will be fewer boxers in general. also you avoid the point that tv no longer really shows any fights. i remember back in the day boxing being on public tv, but thats been a long time ago. so if tv ran the live fights away, and the lack of live fights is the reason there are very few gyms, and the lack of training leads to less fighters, then by simple math would that not mean that boxing is not doing all that well?
i am on about 20 mma forums from the UG/OG to txmma to the mmacrypt and so on, and i rarely see anyone complain about a guy like lesnar, hell he has a TON of huge fans. lesnar (teh wwe guy you boxing gusy liek to say sucks) in all actuality doesnt suck but is a monster with great talent. nobody liked kimbo except the people betting he would be an after thought in a short period of time, and the knuckleheads who only watched him because he jacked some people up on line. and last i checked he beat the hell out of a pro boxer in the cage.
Sorry, but this is the first I've heard about the possibility of boxing being eliminated from the Olympics. As a matter of fact, early this year the IOC was considering adding women to the boxing category.
I do know there are concerns among boxers and trainers fighting overseas and getting screwed on the hometown cooking decisions like what happened in Korea, but that was 22 years ago.
Also, a lot of boxers coming up today do not want to hone their skills in the amateurs, compete for the Olympics without getting paid. They're in a hurry to turn pro and start making money while overlooking the advantages to winning an Olympic medal as a promotion tool for their career. The same way the NBA is recruiting talent straight out of high school, boxing promoters and managers are looking for the next big prospect and trying to lure them in before they have a chance to go to Olympic trials.
The korean debacle led to the IOC pressing boxing to come up with a better scoring system....which has apparantly been a failure. There has been talk of removing boxing from the olympics as a result. It may not be serious but there has definitely been trouble with the IOC.
Just saying that this would be a huge blow to global boxing is all. Might be very remote but it all casts a shadow on boxing as a whole for it's scoring legitimacy.
Boxing has already had black eyes over the year for who gets title shots and who doesnt and dodging opponents etc. etc. just saying that's a problem.
what valid points have you made? i have only seen you say that boxing is alive and well because the fighters make a ton of money. you also made the point that there are less gyms because there are less live fights, and there are less live fights because of TV but refuse to face the fact that the fewer gyms, the less chance boxers have as there will be fewer boxers in general. also you avoid the point that tv no longer really shows any fights. i remember back in the day boxing being on public tv, but thats been a long time ago. so if tv ran the live fights away, and the lack of live fights is the reason there are very few gyms, and the lack of training leads to less fighters, then by simple math would that not mean that boxing is not doing all that well?
i am on about 20 mma forums from the UG/OG to txmma to the mmacrypt and so on, and i rarely see anyone complain about a guy like lesnar, hell he has a TON of huge fans. lesnar (teh wwe guy you boxing gusy liek to say sucks) in all actuality doesnt suck but is a monster with great talent. nobody liked kimbo except the people betting he would be an after thought in a short period of time, and the knuckleheads who only watched him because he jacked some people up on line. and last i checked he beat the hell out of a pro boxer in the cage.
You claimed that boxing is dead because of attendance at some obscure title fight, I provided examples of how you are mistaken based on your premise that attendance at some random obscure fights was an indicator of boxings demise.
Boxing is still televised, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. So far you've made some far reaching claims, and after breezing over some of your posts in the MMA forum, I see not much is different over there either.
Nobody liked Kimbo? That's not what I saw at his last couple of fights when the crowd was clearly cheering him on and attendance was heavy because he was a huge draw, as most freak shows are. Lot's of posters and billboards in support of Kimbo in the crowd. The same fans who jam the arena's to watch Slice and Lesnar are the same ones who pack the streets watching the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest cheering on their favorite eater. Yes, Kimbo beat up on a 46 year old washed up Ray Mercer via a chokehold. Two years later, that same Mercer, at the age of 48, KO's Tim Sylvia, a real MMA fighter, in 9 seconds.
Of course Lesnar has lot's of fans, again, it's the freak show factor. He hasn't paid his dues and his popularity was carried over from WWE, he never established a fan base in MMA. A guy like Randy Couture or Anderson Silva deserve a bigger fan base for what they've accomplished in MMA, Lesnar does not. I'm sure if some more WWE wrestlers like Randy Orton or John Cena crossed over to MMA they'd have an instant fanbase as well.
The korean debacle led to the IOC pressing boxing to come up with a better scoring system....which has apparantly been a failure. There has been talk of removing boxing from the olympics as a result. It may not be serious but there has definitely been trouble with the IOC.
Just saying that this would be a huge blow to global boxing is all. Might be very remote but it all casts a shadow on boxing as a whole for it's scoring legitimacy.
Boxing has already had black eyes over the year for who gets title shots and who doesnt and dodging opponents etc. etc. just saying that's a problem.
There's no question that boxing has it's issues to deal with. It has always had a shady side to it, from the early days when it was controlled by the mob, to the shady promoters of today like King and Arum.
The Olympic scoring has long been debated and argued. I agree, the scoring system sucks, and I'm not sure what it will take for the IOC to convince the powers that be that there system is flawed. Currently, in order for a punch to be scored for a fighter, 3 of the 5 judges at ringside must simultaneouly push a button within a one second window in order for that punch to be scored. If they simply allowed more time it would probably help to eliminate a lot of the challenges and controversy.
Right now the biggest controversy I see with pro boxing is allowing the elite champions to make their own fights and hand pick their opponents. There are also way too many sanctioning bodies. Go back to one champion per weight division and it will be much more competitive. As with anything else, money is the motivator. For now, I have to say, MMA has helped to make boxing more competitive. It woke the promoters up and they've been making better fights that fans want to see in the last ten years.
You claimed that boxing is dead because of attendance at some obscure title fight, I provided examples of how you are mistaken based on your premise that attendance at some random obscure fights was an indicator of boxings demise.
Boxing is still televised, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. So far you've made some far reaching claims, and after breezing over some of your posts in the MMA forum, I see not much is different over there either.
Nobody liked Kimbo? That's not what I saw at his last couple of fights when the crowd was clearly cheering him on and attendance was heavy because he was a huge draw, as most freak shows are. Lot's of posters and billboards in support of Kimbo in the crowd. The same fans who jam the arena's to watch Slice and Lesnar are the same ones who pack the streets watching the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest cheering on their favorite eater. Yes, Kimbo beat up on a 46 year old washed up Ray Mercer via a chokehold. Two years later, that same Mercer, at the age of 48, KO's Tim Sylvia, a real MMA fighter, in 9 seconds.
Of course Lesnar has lot's of fans, again, it's the freak show factor. He hasn't paid his dues and his popularity was carried over from WWE, he never established a fan base in MMA. A guy like Randy Couture or Anderson Silva deserve a bigger fan base for what they've accomplished in MMA, Lesnar does not. I'm sure if some more WWE wrestlers like Randy Orton or John Cena crossed over to MMA they'd have an instant fanbase as well.
obscure title fight? um last i checked it was for a title in one of YOUR suggest 4 governing bodies. one of the 4 YOU claim to be the only true governing bodies of the sport, so is it an obscure title fight or is it a legit true MAJOR title fight. if the fight i posted was like say the "NORTH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SEMI DECENT BOXERS" or NAASDB (say it in your head its kinda funny HA) then sure it would be obscure. you are putting on the same page as the titles toney has that you say are not "legit" because they are not one of the 4 main ones. so which is it?
that TITLE fight had around 8300 people. anderson silva vs chael sonnen had about 13k in a very similar venue both in vegas. the legacy fights here in houston 2 weeks ago (where 2 of our students retained their belts) had about 7k in attendance. now that is an obscure title fight.
as for kimbo fans, you said follow the forums and you will see kimbo fans, we are talking about the real fans, and the fighters out there on the forums, not the people who think it might be cool to go to a ufc fight and cheer on the big half bald, funky shaving guy who knocked some guys eye out in a back yard fight. sure there will be a lot of those type of people out there, just as there where for mike tyson, just like there are for mayweather ever since he got paid some stupid money to go on the WWE and fight a 7 ft tall guy. talk about freak show. you see it doesnt mater what sport it is, they all have a shtick. they all have the freak shows.
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