Ever wonder how boxing great Manny Pacquiao would perform in an MMA fight, assuming he enters an MMA ring as a pure boxer?
Well, an undercard involving featherweights of the Universal Reality Combat Championship—the leading MMA promotion in the Philippines—served as a simulation to answer that question.
Here’s the video of the fourth match at URCC 21 Warpath, held at the SMX Convention Center in Metro Manila in the Philippines last month.
Watch former boxer and now National Kickboxing (Nat Kick) representative Mario Sismundo, a dead ringer of boxing’s living legend, walk into the blue corner.
Into the red corner runs Miguel Alo, a recently retired member of the Philippines’ national wrestling team, representing Team S.P.R.A.W.L.
If you think this featherweight match turned out to be a smaller and obviously less significant version of the classic James Toney vs. Randy Couture fight at UFC 118, you are right. The other major difference being that this fight between the Filipino fighters took much longer, with the armbar submission (instead of an arm triangle choke) coming late in the second round.
(URCC does not observe the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, and instead features two 10-minute rounds per match a la Pride Fighting Championship of yesteryear.)
The following excerpts are from previous article URCC 21 Results: Nicholas Mann Beats Froilan Sarenas for Superfight Belt:
…The crowd was chanting “Manny! Manny!” during the bout as Sismundo looked like a dead ringer of boxing great Manny Pacquiao.
However, the former Philippine wrestling team mainstay took down the kickboxer at will throughout the fight and unleashed vicious punches and elbows in his ground-and-pound.
When the fight was stopped with the tapout, Sismundo’s bloodied face looked less like Pacquiao’s and more like Antonio Margarito’s—post Pacquiao.
In fairness to Sismundo, he did show some guard, mount, rear-naked choke attempts and takedown defense, albeit mostly inefficient.
What if the real Manny Pacquiao cross-trains in wrestling and ground grappling for a year before, hypothetically, making his MMA debut fight?
That could very well turn out to be a different story.
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