The sport of Mixed Martial Arts was built on the instinctive curiosity behind one question:
“What would happen if this kind of fighter fought that kind of fighter?”
In the early UFC, all we saw were crossover fights between various kinds of martial arts.
As the sport evolved, the participants involved became ‘mixed martial artists’, a term created to indicate a fighter that is a student of multiple mixed martial arts.
Over time, the possibility for ‘crossover fights’ diminished as a result, but the demand by the public hadn’t.
And so the ‘Boxing vs MMA’ debate began.
When we hear the potential for a crossover bout nowadays, it’s almost automatically assumed that the MMA fighter will step into the boxing ring, for two main reasons:
1) Boxing makes more money
2) Boxing is safer
However, there was a select few times that boxers have shown a willingness to step into the cage.
The video below outlines four times that a boxer fought a mixed martial artist in MMA.