I Miss Boxing

I Miss Boxing

I assume boxing still exists in some form or fashion. Like a lot of sports, it doesn’t matter anymore, which is the same as being extinct to me. They have that wan replacement with barefoot guys with manbuns rolling around on the mat and barfighting occasionally. I’m not interested. Barfighting ain’t boxing.

Plenty of people would point to Ali-Foreman as the high water mark of boxing. Ali wasn’t just the most famous athlete in the world by that time. He may very well have been the most famous person of any kind. Boxing was a sport that every corner of the world understood, and Ali beat real competition to win his championships. This fight, right here, the Rumble in the Jungle, cemented his legacy. There was no way on Earth anyone could have beaten George Foreman. But Ali did.

Poor Mike Tyson stomped around the ring a decade later, looking for someone worthy to beat up, but there was no one left worth his time. There’s no way to know if he was in the same class as Ali, or Foreman, or Joe Frazier, or Jack Dempsey, or a handful of other guys. He was the undisputed king of a hill with nothing but gravestones on it.

If they fought 100 times, I think Foreman would have won 99 of them. Ali sure showed up for the first one. The one that counted. When they were kings. Nothing but jesters left now.

5 thoughts on “I Miss Boxing

  1. Boxing is probably the best self defense there is, but the cost of getting good is too high due to all the sparring involved.

    MMA is constantly evolving. The sport is only 20 legit years old, but has improved to the point that the two fighters starting a card would have destroyed Royce Gracie and the other guys who pioneered it.

  2. One thing never heard at a UFC fight – “Fighting in the red corner, he’s a Boxer out of…”

    There’s a reason for that.

    Also, if it’s an “Art” it’s not applicable for the street. Krav Maga, Dennis Survival Ju Jitsu, and others, are not martial arts, for a reason. Learn one of those and you will understand why boxing, a sport, unto itself is useless for self defense.

  3. I miss the good old days of boxing. Growing up in LA my dad and my uncle would take me the the Olympic Auditorium to see all those great fighters from back then. It seemed like all the best ones were the up and coming Mexican fighters from all around the area. Guys like Mando Muniz, Danny “Little Red” Lopez, Mando Ramos and others. We would also watch the fights on TV. I think it was channel 5 or channel 13 that would show the matches.

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