Freeman: Boxing over MMA
Boxing is dead, but its brain still hasn't gotten the message to the body. That will come after this weekend, after Oscar De La Hoya fights Floyd Mayweather. Don't be fooled by whatever noise comes out of Las Vegas. It's just boxing's death rattle.
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| Once Oscar De La Hoya retires, what will boxing have to offer? (Getty Images) |
There's something to finish off boxing now. If you know what I'm talking about, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you don't know, you're going to laugh or scoff or leave this page so you can read cranky old Mike Freeman grump about all those whippersnappers and hooligans in the UFC. Freeman was listening to Bananarama and wearing denim shorts when he wrote that column. Denim shorts are out, you know. They're yesterday.
So is boxing. Boxing is out. Expired. Irrelevant.
Mixed martial arts -- MMA, thank you very much -- will be the new boxing. And the UFC will be the new WBA. Or WBC. Or WBO. Or IBF. Or whatever useless string of letters boxing tried to throw together as it took its final breaths.
Boxing is dead not just because boxing is worse than ever -- which it is -- but also because the UFC is better than boxing on all but boxing's best day. Give boxing a charmer like Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Leonard, and give him some talented competition like Joe Frazier or Thomas Hearns, and boxing has a chance. Give boxing Ruslan Chagaev and Vitali Klitschko, and it's being rushed to the hospital, its heart stopped, none of the doctors caring enough to save it.
And don't give me De La Hoya-Mayweather. What are they, welterweights? Middleweights? I'm not looking it up, because I don't care. And that's the point. Boxing has lost me, and lots of people like me, because the fighters aren't as good, the rivalries aren't as compelling, and the access -- it's all about (free) TV, people -- isn't as easy.
The heavyweight champion used to be the most famous man in the world. But boxing is so inept now that when its heavyweight champ was a 7-foot, 325-pound circus act, most people still couldn't name him (he was Nikolai Valuev, and you didn't miss much.)
In the 1980s boxing grabbed me by the heart with Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Leonard, "Hit Man" Hearns and Aaron Pryor. Alexis Arguello, Tony Ayala and Dwight Qawi. Sean O'Grady and Cornelius Boza-Edwards. Marvin Johnson. Yaqui Lopez.
Now it's full of ... who? Who matters in boxing beyond De La Hoya and Mayweather? Nobody, and De La Hoya will probably retire after this fight. That'll leave Mayweather to fight somebody you've never heard of. Let's see HBO market that.
Meanwhile, the UFC is growing impossibly fast even without a major television breakthrough. Spike TV airs old UFC cards on Tuesdays and the reality show The Ultimate Fighter 5 on Thursdays (Corey Hill is a future champ, Gabe Ruediger is a narcissistic fraud and Jens Pulver is my kind of coach). But that's not the TV breakthrough I have in mind.
UFC also is growing as a pay-per-view ticket, breaking some boxing (and pro wrestling) records and soon to break them all. Until this spring the UFC had been a West Coast phenomenon, but when it visited Columbus, Ohio, in March it sold all 19,000 available tickets in hours. Earlier this month the UFC went to England for a free show on Spike. The UFC is spreading globally -- but that's not the TV breakthrough, either.
As soon as ESPN and UFC president Dana White make a deal, UFC will reach a tipping point -- on its way to becoming more popular than boxing ever was. Mark my words. The sport is that cool, and after growing underground, it's ready to rise up and swallow boxing whole.
Basically, the UFC is everything boxing should be. Fast action. Quick fights, even ones that go the distance. Brutal knockouts. Fascinating characters. And in White the UFC has a magnetic, believable front man that boxing, stuck with Don King and Bob Arum, lacks.
The whole process -- UFC in, boxing out -- is happening faster than you realize, because behind the scenes boxing is being robbed by mixed martial arts. Boxing gyms are yesterday. MMA workout dens are today and tomorrow. Talented young fighters now have a choice, and many are chasing the UFC, not the IBF. As that talent drain continues, boxing's slide will become irreversible. Maybe it already has become irreversible. OK by me. Boxing had its chance and blew it. Kind of like the Tyrannosaurus.
This weekend, two of the last dinosaurs will go at it in Las Vegas. People will watch, because old habits die hard.
Fine.
A funeral deserves a good turnout.
