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Who knew today Wladimir Klitchsko defends his heavyweight title against Italian Francesco Pianeta? Nobody.
Who cares? Nobody.
Gone are the days when heavyweight boxers were household names. Gone are the days when the heavyweight championship was one of the most prestigious titles in the world of sport.
Unless you follow boxing, you wouldn’t even know who Wladimir Klitchsko is.
Unborn babies know who Muhammad Ali is.
Heavyweight boxing is dying a slow death. And boxing in general isn’t far off either.
In contrast, last weekend Jon Jones, with a broken toe, retained his UFC light-heavyweight championship against Chael Sonnen.
The UFC, founded in November of 1993, has now become a legitimate threat to boxing as Mixed Martial Arts continues to be the fastest growing sport in the world.
With great characters, great feuds, great trash-talkers, great champions and great fights, the UFC has a far more appealing brand.
The man behind the success is President Dana White. White is a fantastic businessman, who is very involved in the process of organising and promoting fights. If the fans want to see a certain match-up, White will fight tooth-and-nail to give it to them.
For years UFC fans have yearned for a ‘superfight’ between the unstoppable middleweight champion Anderson Silva and equally dominant welterweight champion George Saint-Pierre, or more recently with the light-heavyweight champion, Jon Jones.
After UFC 159, Dana White delivered exciting news that whet the appetites of fans across the globe; Silva had called him and requested a ‘superfight’.
Compare this to boxing, where the dream match-up for a long time now has been Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquaio, and for various reasons, including money, it has never happened and probably never will.
The politics involved in boxing are killing it.
Even Iron Mike questions the current culture of boxing.
“It has to be a passion. That’s the problem with boxing: There’s no passion,” Tyson told reporters. “People want to be record producers, rappers.
“In MMA, you see that passion. Georges St-Pierre, this is all he wants to do. That’s why he’s so successful.
“I think there’s room for both (sports), but boxing just has too many black eyes. It doesn’t have a good image. In MMA, even though people are fighting, they have a good image. Very few of them get into tragic troubles where they’re beating people up and stuff.
“I love MMA and love boxing, but I’m always watching the MMA stuff. With boxing, you don’t know if the guy’s going to get a (good) decision, you know?
“In UFC, there’s the Ultimate Fighter house – you cultivate the fighters spiritually, work with them, it’s a team effort. In boxing, it’s like, ‘The hell with you.’ The fighters dislike everybody. The MMA fighters are killing each other and they’re friends!”
With everything such as politics and culture aside, the UFC is perhaps a better spectacle aswell. Spinning back fists, superman punches, flying kicks off the cage all make up the crazy arsenal of UFC fighters.
Boxing is a fantastic sport with a long, proud history. But right now Mixed Martial Arts and more specifically the UFC is leaving it for dead.
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