There has long been a standing rivalry between MMA and boxing fans. MMA fans love to state how boxing is dead and MMA is far superior while boxing fans continue to carry on about how big their purses are while MMA fighters are paid a pittance.While nei…
There has long been a standing rivalry between MMA and boxing fans. MMA fans love to state how boxing is dead and MMA is far superior while boxing fans continue to carry on about how big their purses are while MMA fighters are paid a pittance.
While neither are entirely wrong, the fact that it’s impossible to be fans of both remains the most frustrating thing in combat sports.
Well, it seems as if Floyd Mayweather Sr. has joined the discussion on Twitter, and he had some choice words for Dana White and the sport of MMA. Floyd Mayweather Sr. is the father and former trainer of “Pretty Boy” Floyd and is credited with teaching his son defensive skills, including his patented shoulder roll.
First, Floyd Sr. took aim at MMA. Like many detractors, he focused on the grappling aspect of the sport. It’s one that even the most diehard of fans find boring at times and is the cause for many arguments regarding referee stand ups and cage breaks.
that mma shit be hella gay though and thats just #RealTalk how u gon be puttin yo face on mans dick and tell me it aint gay #MMA#boxing
Well Mr. Mayweather, I would disagree. I don’t think anyone consciously does anything you said in this tweet. Furthermore, if they did, I’m sure it was a necessary part of their game plan. It’s the new millennium, quit being so close-minded.
After his compelling argument about MMA, Mr. Mayweather turned his attention to UFC president Dana White. Mind you, Dana White said nothing to Mayweather to cause such a reaction.
dana white is a f****t and i would kick his fat ass all the way to the hospital so f*ck him and f*ck you 2. #LoveMyRealFans
Why the hostility?! It’s clear that Floyd Sr. has some unresolved issues with Dana, but what he’s saying is absolutely insane. Dana White is a fan of boxing and has done nothing to deserve such words from Mayweather. In fact, he congratulated Floyd Jr. on his purse and win this past week.
It should be noted that Floyd Sr. has trained with BJ Penn in the past and even told the former-lightweight champion to not be so aggressive in his fights. Hopefully one day Mayweather can put his differences with MMA behind him and become a fan of the sport. It would be the first step in ending the silly rivalry.
Disclaimer: While these come from an unverified account, it is believed that these are the words of Floyd Mayweather Sr. All curse words in tweets have been edited to keep this post safe for work.
Fans of combat sports were treated to a memorable evening on Saturday night as Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Miguel Cotto battled it out on pay-per-view following an entertaining fight card put on by the UFC on FOX.The ratings aren’t in quite yet for these …
Fans of combat sports were treated to a memorable evening on Saturday night as Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Miguel Cotto battled it out on pay-per-view following an entertaining fight card put on by the UFC on FOX.
The ratings aren’t in quite yet for these events, but judging by trends on both Google and Twitter, it’s safe to assume that the Mayweather-Cotto event profited a huge number while UFC likely lagged behind the results that it pulled in from the first two events on FOX.
The night proved that while the UFC may be the fastest growing, boxing is still the king of combat all sports…
For now.
There is absolutely no denying that Floyd Mayweather is the biggest draw in fighting today. His pay-per-view buy numbers are astounding. His rival, Manny Pacquiao, trails behind him but is still by far and away the second-biggest draw.
But after that, it’s anyone’s guess.
It has been nearly eight years since the last time that a pay-per-view event headlined by someone other than Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao reached a million buys, when Oscar De La Hoya battled Bernard Hopkins.
Pacquiao and Mayweather crack the one million buy mark with ease in every fight they have, but aside from those two marquee fighters, the sport of boxing and its influence on the mainstream sports world is on life support.
If you take Pacquiao and Mayweather out of the equation, boxing only had two events in 2011 which reached even 100,000 pay-per-view buys. In contrast, the UFC easily surpassed 100,000 buys for every event they put on in 2011.
As Mayweather and Pacquiao near the end of their careers, the UFC must be salivating at the possibility of finally being the pinnacle of combat sports. Who knows exactly how long boxing’s stars will stick around, but with no one waiting in the wings to take their place, boxing could be in for some serious dark days as the UFC pulls ahead, perhaps for the long haul.
While the UFC did lose its own biggest pay-per-view buy generator in Brock Lesnar, the growth in the popularity of stars such as Jon Jones and Junior dos Santos could help make up for that. However, the biggest reason for the company’s success on pay-per-view has been its business model.
Unlike boxing, the UFC brands itself, not the fighters.
Sure, they create stars in the process, but the focus is always on the UFC brand itself. If a main event fight gets canceled, the card isn’t scrapped—they just replace it with another fight and fans eat it up. We simply can’t get enough. That cannot and does not happen in the boxing world.
If the sport of boxing doesn’t drastically change its model, we could be talking about it in the past tense. As in, “remember when we used to watch boxing?”
We might already be past the point of no return…and the UFC is ready to fill the void.
For more MMA news, fighter interviews and opinions, follow Nick Caron: @NicholasCaron.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. puts on a show. Simply put, Mayweather is an artist. Life is his canvas. In his case it’s one giant reality show, filled with more drama than a thousand Real Worlds, more custom made clothing than any season of Project Runway, all …
Floyd Mayweather Jr. puts on a show. Simply put, Mayweather is an artist. Life is his canvas. In his case it’s one giant reality show, filled with more drama than a thousand Real Worlds, more custom made clothing than any season of Project Runway, all punctuated with occasional bursts of sporting brilliance.
More than a great fighter, he’s a superlative entertainer, in a class that few have ever approached in sports history. Muhammad Ali, Joe Namath, Mike Tyson and the immortal Hulk Hogan—Mayweather absolutely belongs in that elite class.
Before he ever stepped into the ring, smiles were on millions of faces around the world. An entourage of pro wrestler Triple H, pop star Justin Bieber and rap impresario 50 Cent? Are you kidding me? Mayweather needed all of those hands to carry his huge collection of title belts, a product of his 43 professional wins.
For the first time in recent memory, Mayweather was pushed. Miguel Cotto, himself a future Hall of Famer, was able to bully Mayweather into the ropes and do some solid work. But to the surprise of many, Mayweather never tried to dance away. Instead, he stood his ground, carefully tracking Cotto’s every punch with the military grade radar system he calls eyeballs, and beat Cotto at his own game.
Cotto never yielded to Floyd’s brilliance. That’s something we’ve seen happen all to often in Mayweather fights. There is typically a moment when you can see an opponent deflate, pinpointing to the second they realize in their heart of hearts they can’t win. Cotto never came to that realization. He fought until the end, and when the decision didn’t go his way, he stormed from the ring rather than submit to Larry Merchant’s presumably tortuous post-fight interview.
Sensing the vacuum, Mayweather conducted two interviews, one where he made amends with the legendarily cantankerous Merchant, and another where he charmed Jim Lampley and Emanuel Steward ringside.
All ears perked up when he mentioned a potential bout with Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather seems open to the fight, one boxing fans have been pining for. First there’s the small matter of 90 days in county jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge after an altercation with his girlfriend in September 2010.
What will the experience do to Mayweather? Will it ground him? Open his eyes to life’s absurdity? Make him appreciate what he has? Will it make Floyd more likely to pursue Pacquiao and his place among the immortals? Or less? Nothing is ever boring in Floyd Mayweather’s world. I’m just glad to share it for an hour or two.
As the UFC is set to go head-to-head with HBO’s Mayweather vs. Cotto card this weekend, UFC president Dana White recently sat down with Fox Sports columnist and “Barfly” host Mark Kriegel to discuss current events in mixed martial arts, including his r…
As the UFC is set to go head-to-head with HBO’s Mayweather vs. Cotto card this weekend, UFC president Dana Whiterecently sat down with Fox Sports columnist and “Barfly” host Mark Kriegel to discuss current events in mixed martial arts, including his relationship with current boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Both White and Mayweather have not been known to be the best of friends in recent years, but they have also maintained a civil and respectable relationship with each other.
Obviously, boxing and MMA are two entirely different sports, but both continue to generate respective successes.
White spoke about his past with Mayweather and said his most recent encounter with the WBC welterweight champion was far from what he expected.
“Me and Floyd have been going at each other in the media quite a bit, recently when he made the Jeremy Lin comments and I called him a racist,” White said.
“The other night I’m playing cards at the Palms and [someone] taps me on the back, I turn around, it’s Floyd. He says ‘I just wanted to tell you, what you’re doing with the UFC is awesome, man. I’m happy for you, really happy everything’s going well.’ I said ‘Well, thank you.’
“Now don’t I feel like the biggest (expletive) in the world? I’m out there smashing him and he’s killing me with kindness,” he concluded.
Despite the constant debate revolving around the superiority of boxing and MMA, it’s evident that both UFC fighters and boxers have shown to be more appreciative of either sport.
Floyd Mayweather Junior will tell you he’s the best boxer of his generation, arguably of all time. And, self-promotion and bombast aside, he might just be right. Mayweather has stood across the ring from 42 different opponents in professional bouts. On…
Floyd Mayweather Junior will tell you he’s the best boxer of his generation, arguably of all time. And, self-promotion and bombast aside, he might just be right.
Mayweather has stood across the ring from 42 different opponents in professional bouts. On 42 different occasions, from Mississippi to Idaho, he’s had his hand raised high. Nine major world titles have been strapped around his waist, and his list of victims reads like a list of future boxing Hall of Famers—Corrales, Castillo, Gatti, De La Hoya, Marquez and Mosley.
Saturday night in Las Vegas, at the MGM Grand where he’s competed on eight occasions, Mayweather will look to add Miguel Cotto to that list. But it’s far from a done deal. Mayweather may have never been beaten—but he’s not unbeatable.
Past opponents have laid the groundwork for how to beat him. There is a game plan that, if executed perfectly, that can lead an opponent to victory. I’m not saying Miguel Cotto is going to beat Floyd Mayweather. But if he does, this will be how.
When you are in the position Keith Kizer is in these days, it is hard to please everybody. With the Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal hearing earlier this year, the Nick Diaz marijuana case that has taken one strange turn after another and the Alistair Overeem …
When you are in the position Keith Kizer is in these days, it is hard to please everybody. With the Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal hearing earlier this year, the Nick Diaz marijuana case that has taken one strange turn after another and the Alistair Overeem case, it’s been a trying time for Kizer.
The Executive Director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission took some time to talk about the various situations he and his commission have been through lately.
It was reported last week that Nick Diaz is suing the Nevada State Athletic Commission for alleged violations of statutory law and his constitutional right to due process. That is relating to his failed drug test after his fight with Carlos Condit at UFC 143 for marijuana metabolites.
Kizer, as of this interview, knew nothing of the lawsuit.
“I don’t know anything about this,” Kizer said. “I’ve not been served with anything. I’ve seen some press stories about it, but we’ve not been served with anything. The last we had talked with his attorney, Ross Goodman, the attorney general rep Chris Eckels and I.
“Ross is basically saying, ‘Hey look, I’m still waiting to get that medical marijuana card from Nick. Cesar Gracie promised me it for over a month now. Don’t blame me.’
“No, we aren’t blaming you Ross,” Kizer said. “Sometimes there’s client issues. Get us that card and we can proceed and he said OK. The next thing I know, there’s a letter about some kind of summary suspension and now there’s apparently some kind of complaint about that.”
It was reported last week that Diaz received a corner’s license from the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board to corner his brother Nate for his main event fight this Saturday against Jim Miller. Kizer states he has no problem with Diaz receiving the license.
“Nick Lembo (from the NJSACB) actually sent me an email asking if I had any objection to it and I said, ‘No, that’s a New Jersey issue and that’s up to them whether to grant it or not,'” Kizer said. “I have no problems with them saying yes or no for that matter had they said no. So that’s a New Jersey issue, not a Nevada issue.”
The commission has been under more fire due to the hearing of Alistair Overeem last Tuesday. The hearing was taking place due to Overeem taking a drug test after a press conference to announce his UFC 146 Heavyweight Title Fight with Junior Dos Santos. The test came back showing Overeem had a 14-to-1 testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio—more than twice the 6-to-1 ratio allowed by the NSAC.
Kizer details that it was it took a little longer than he wanted for Overeem to take the initial test after the UFC 146 presser.
“Basically what happened, I was on my way over and I told Greg Hendrick (Director of Event Operations for the UFC) and Marc Ratner (UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs) that these guys need to be told just before they get on the stage that they need to stick around afterwards,” Kizer said. “I’ll be showing up and I’ll be bringing the drug collector with me or he’ll be coming as well.
“So we showed, I showed up first, as did the chairman and one of the commissioners on their way back to the airport. We all got there right near the end of the press conference. Then as the press conference ended, the chairman and the other commissioners said, ‘We are gonna head out, Keith, see ya later.’ I said OK, no problem.
“As they’re walking away, I see the back of Mr. Overeem’s head walking out of the MGM (Grand Hotel) lobby and going to where the cars come up and pick you up. At first I thought, well maybe that’s his brother. It doesn’t make any sense, because I told the UFC to let them know just before they got on the stage to stick around. The other five guys knew that.
“Actually, Frank Mir and Roy Nelson both came up to me and said, ‘Look, you know we have things we have to do. Do you know how long this will be?’ I said, ‘Look as soon as the drug collector gets here; he should be here any minute. We’ll get you guys done really fast, but sorry you gotta wait till he gets here.’
“And they did,” Kizer said. “There were no issues there. But with Mr. Overeem, he headed out the door. Greg Hendrick was the one who informed the fighter camps to stick around. He was beside himself, not sure why Mr. Overeem left after he had apparently told the camp. He didn’t get a chance to talk to Mr. Overeem before he got on the stage, but he told his camp just to have him stick around. So he was quite shocked as well.
“A bunch of fans came to me disappointed because they wanted his autograph and asked me, ‘Why did he leave?’ I said, ‘Well, he’ll be back.’ And I kinda left it at that. I didn’t let the fans know about the drug test or anything like that time. That was something that at that time was a commission matter. Mr. Overeem came back about 10, 15 minutes later.
“We actually had to call Kirk Hendrick, who’s the COO of the UFC and he made sure it got done. I knew he’d take care of it. The other people from the UFC that were there, including Greg, had no idea what had happened and were very confused because that was not what they had told everybody was going to happen afterwards.
“I was first told [Overeem] had to go to some interview media outlet, ESPN or something. A few days later, I was told by ESPN that they were told he was going to his criminal defense attorney’s office because they had pled out that morning on the battery charge. And then later, I was told at the hearing actually on Tuesday—no no he was told to go there by his civil attorney because he was worried about getting served papers by Golden Glory.
“Of course, he could have headed straight back behind the registration desk to the private room, where we were keeping the fighters to get drug tested after they did their one-on-one interviews with the press after the press conference. But he chose to go out the front door. He says he was never told by his camp that we wanted him drug tested.
“Sounds like a familiar story from last year when apparently there was a miscommunication between him and his camp. But nonetheless, he did come back fairly quickly and then he was drug tested like the other five.”
A lot of the public has been very critical of the commission for how they were praising Overeem at his licensing hearing last Tuesday. People have been calling for the commission to be replaced. Kizer doesn’t understand what all the uproar is about.
“I don’t understand the uproar other than people just like to complain,” Kizer said. “All the commissioners are appointed to three-year terms by the governor. They are staggered so every year there’s one or two up for renewal. But yeah, I don’t understand. I guess they want people to berate, belittle other people. That’s never been the style of this commission.
“They’re ones who again don’t have to flex their muscles to show how strong they are. They’ve already basically took this guy’s career for the rest of the year, if not longer. Cost him millions of dollars in revenue that he’s not gonna get now. So, there’s no need to beat a guy when he’s down. In other words, it’s better to say no with a smile sometimes.
“And he is a former champion; he is a superstar. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with softening the blow with some kind words at the end there. It didn’t make any difference to the penalty he’s going to be serving at least for the next long period of time, if not longer.”
There has been outcry for random testing, even out-of-competition testing. Kizer says that will be happening not only in MMA, but boxing as well.
“Yes, now that we got our funding back,” Kizer said. “The same week, it’s not been reported pretty heavily because the boxing people aren’t as enthralled with the chatter perhaps as the MMA media is. But we also tested Floyd Mayweather that same day and we tested Miguel Cotto also that week. They both passed, as did the other five gentlemen at the UFC press conference.
“So we actually had eight big names tested. Unfortunately there’s a lot of falsehoods to be kind in the reporting in both the MMA worlds and the boxing world. One thing I always hear is: ‘Oh the commissioners don’t want to lose a big fight.’
“It’s like wait a minute, I just Floyd Mayweather, Miguel Cotto, Alistair Overeem, Junior Dos Santos and four other names which are pretty big in the field,” Kizer said. “In the past, we’ve tested Mayweather, Pacquiao, Couture, Lesnar and all these guys out of competition. So, if I’m afraid to test somebody, who would that be? Because it’s kind of hard to beat those those names as far as popularity or things like that.
“I see people saying, “Oh, the way they denied Overeem is because they want him to fight in Nevada again.’
“It’s like if we want him to fight in Nevada again, we wouldn’t be denying him a license for the May 26th show,” Kizer said.
There has long been a standing rivalry between MMA and boxing fans. MMA fans love to state how boxing is dead and MMA is far superior while boxing fans continue to carry on about how big their purses are while MMA fighters are paid a pittance.