UFC ain't SH##...

sakurob · Posted: 04 Apr 2007 02:07 PM Post subject: UFC ain't SH##...

Floyd Mayweather Rips Oscar, Liddell, MMA
By Michael Woods

Floyd Mayweather Jr. says he'll give Chuck Liddell $1 million out of his own pocket if he can beat a heavyweight boxer.

"UFC ain’t sh*t,” Mayweather told SweetScience.com yesterday. “It ain’t but a fad. Anyone can put a tattoo on their head and get in a street fight.”

He singled out Liddell, and doubted the UFC light-heavyweight champ could hang with a pro boxer of similar weight.

"These are guys who couldn't make it in boxing," he said.

Mayweather, who fights Oscar de la Hoya on May 5, went on to say that boxing is the best sport in the world and "is here to stay."

I tend to always sway toward MMA, as I'm a big fan and student of the game. But both sports can co-exist and learn from each others mistakes. Saying that one sport might be on the brink of extinction and that you like one sport more than the other is one thing. But for an actual star athlete like Mayweather to say a comment like "UFC ain't shit", is unprofessional, and not classy. I too can learn from that now that I can see it from the outside. Sport bashing like that is uncalled for. I think somewhere Dana White in an interview somewhere had some choice words for Mr. Mayweather. I'm sure another "C.com'er" will post that interview.

sakurob · Posted: 05 Apr 2007 06:20 PM Post subject: Holy.......Sh**

I want my UFC
By Mary Buckheit

I hate to disagree with boxing's best pound-for-pound fighter, but I've got a bone to pick with Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Last week, during a press conference to publicize his upcoming bout with Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd took a shot at the Ultimate Fighting Championship -- which has been near and dear to my heart since I caught my first whiff of The Octagon.

Think Mayweather would get in the ring with Chuck Liddell, the UFC light heavyweight champ?"UFC ain't s---," Mayweather said. "It ain't but a fad. … These are guys who couldn't make it in boxing. So they do [mixed martial arts]. Boxing is the best sport in the world and it's here to stay."

Mayweather is 30 years old. The Pretty Boy should know better.

He should know that boxing is a dinosaur, and that the pet pit bull of us 20-somethings is the UFC. That's an unarguable fact. Check the ratings, and the pay-per-view receipts.

We of the age of MTV want our UFC. Sure, if us kids know what's good for us, we come to MMA with inherent respect for Ali, and Marciano, and Tunney, and Dempsey, and Frazier, and the other idols of our fathers. But the generation that is up all night making cheese sandwiches on George Foreman grills is hooked on board shorts and bare hands -- not the big red-gloved traveling circus.

Look no further than the present if you're still playing the b.s. "UFC isn't mainstream" card.

First, just last week, the majority owners of the Ultimate Fighting Championship agreed to buy their biggest mixed-martial-arts rival -- the Japan-based PRIDE Fighting Championships.

PRIDE is to Japan what the UFC is to the U.S. Yes, PRIDE had some financial problems in the past, and there were even rumors of bankruptcy. But with UFC's acquisition of PRIDE, the future of MMA looks as bright as the Las Vegas strip.

"When somebody buys a company for 65 million dollars, that tells you it's pretty mainstream," said Mike Goldberg, the play-by-play announcer for the UFC. "You're bringing together the two main entities of the sport. This obviously opens a lot of doors for huge fight opportunities all over the world. … It's huge. It's just huge."

Said Lorenzo Fertitta, majority owner of the UFC: "This is really going to change the face of MMA. Literally creating a sport that could be as big around the world as soccer. I liken it somewhat to when the [old NFL] and [old AFL] came together to create the NFL."

Looks pretty exciting, doesn't it?While the UFC might not be on par with the NFL in the United States, it is riding its biggest wave to date. Besides the acquisition of PRIDE, consider what else is on tap. This Thursday night, "UFC Fight Night" will be broadcast on Spike TV live from The Pearl (the new arena at The Palms in Vegas). And after "Fight Night," the fifth season of the acclaimed reality series "The Ultimate Fighter" will debut. This season the show will feature 16 lightweights -- the new class of the UFC.

Then on Saturday the UFC will head to Texas for the first time ever, for UFC 69: The Shootout (live on pay-per-view). The main event will feature one of the classiest athletes going, current welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre. The Canadian will face off against Matt Serra -- the sparkplug from Long Island, N.Y. who earned his shot at the title by taking "The Ultimate Fighter 4" title. How's that matchup for all you East Coast UFC naysayers? Still think it's just a flash in the pan?

In two weeks, the UFC goes to the UK for the first time since July 2002 (UFC 38: The Brawl at the Hall, in London). Rumor has it the UFC is also securing a date in Ireland and another in England later this year. And on top of all that, there is chatter of a hot new UFC video game in the works.

So, let's recap: a pure product, a reality series, international esteem, and a video game … sorry Floyd, this is no fad.

"We're definitely there. If Floyd Mayweather is being asked about UFC and he is commenting about UFC, no matter what he's saying, we've arrived," said Goldberg. "The fact that it's coming up in a boxing press conference speaks for itself."

So Pretty Boy, as you prepare for your big bout, don't take the UFC's success personally. You've got bigger fish to fry. None of us in Camp UFC are trying to take anything away from the tradition and historical significance of boxing. We're just not interested in it. We're smarter than Don King. (Plus we think UFC prez Dana White could take him down.)

We know what we want.

And if I may reference "Fight Club" one more time, "If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."

We want our UFC.

sakurob · Posted: 16 Apr 2007 06:07 PM Post subject:

White took some time out from an ambitious array of launches on
Thursday evening to talk to TSS. He touched on his scrapped fight with
Ortiz, the quality of the latest installment of the Ultimate Fighter
on Spike TV (which ran on Thursday night), his Saturday pay-per-view,
and Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather, who dissed UFC and mixed martial
artists on a recent teleconference call.

On Monday, Mayweather said he believes MMA is simply a fad that will
burn out, said MMAer are failed boxers and wagered that any decent
heavyweight could beat UFC light heavyweight (185 to 205 pounds)
champion Chuck Liddell. Mayweather offered $1 million of his own dough
to Liddell, in fact, if he won the boxing match.

White, who can cut a soundbite about as well as McMahon, shared his
view of Mayweather's assault on his sport.

"Floyd and I were friends, we knew each other when he was an amateur,"
White said. "But he doesn't know anything about mixed martial arts.
Listen, boxing is game, compared to UFC. UFC is real fighting. And I
came from boxing, and I still do it as a workout."

Regarding Floyd's million-dollar-challenge, White upped the ante.

"I'll give Floyd Mayweather $2 million out of my own pocket if he
wants to fight MMA," White said. "Floyd can fight Uriah Faber, or Joe
Stevenson, or Sean Sherk."

Do I hear $3 million?

Very Happy

realneo · Posted: 17 Apr 2007 12:22 AM Post subject:

sakurob · Posted: 19 Apr 2007 10:55 AM Post subject:

Boxing promoter Frank Maloney reckons it will have "15 minutes of fame", yet it is the fastest-growing spectator sport in the United States.

Boxing legend Barry McGuigan called it "dirty" and "undignified", but statistics suggest it is safer than boxing.

Ultimate Fighting Championship is coming to Britain - and British boxing is rattled.

On Saturday, UFC lands at Manchester's MEN Arena, and 16,000 people, including Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and Girls Aloud, will be there to welcome it.

606: DEBATE
Is the UFC a threat to boxing?

Across the Atlantic, it's already big news. UFC, the leading brand within the sport of mixed martial arts, outsold boxing on the box twice over in 2006 and has just finalised a deal with HBO, the traditional home of boxing in America.

UFC champions Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell are household names, which is more than you can say for Floyd Mayweather, arguably boxing's biggest talent.

And it has even caught the imagination of the A-list, with a host of Hollywood stars - and Paris Hilton - regulars at UFC shows.

There has never been a death or serious injury in UFC and boxing suffers deaths in the ring almost every year

British UFC star Michael Bisping

There's more. Last March, Marc Ratner left his job as executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, one of the most powerful jobs in boxing, to join UFC.

He took Nevada's leading boxing doctor Margaret Goodman with him, and it looked suspiciously like they were deserting a sinking ship.

Ratner is more diplomatic than that but has no doubt that UFC can learn from boxing's ills.

"I very much believe the two sports can co-exist," said Ratner. "In the USA there are clearly two different demographics between the two groups of viewers and I believe there is limited crossover between the two.

"Boxing may have made some big mistakes over the last 25 years, but the UFC can still use it as a model.

"You have to have top guys fighting each other, and not having a single dominant heavyweight champion very much hurts the sport.

"Boxing also needs promoters to work with sanctioning bodies. These are age-old questions, but they need answers quickly for boxing to stay healthy."

Socialite Paris Hilton is a UFC regular in America

Well-matched fights? The best fighters meeting in the ring? Recognised champions in each weight class? It all makes perfect sense.

UFC has come along way since the 1990s, when it was marketed as an ultra-violent entertainment and denounced by some, with some justification, as "human cockfighting".

In 2001, the UFC brand was bought out and repackaged as an authentic sport, celebrating rather than demonising the different skills of boxing, wrestling and various martial arts.

Weight classes, judges, submissions and five-minute rounds were introduced, and gloves and gum-shields became mandatory, as did drug and steroid testing.

That it is still considered by many to be more brutal than boxing owes much to fact that the action takes place in a cage, or 'octagon', 34ft across and surrounded by a 7ft mesh wall.

But Clitheroe's Michael Bisping, winner of last year's Ultimate Fighter reality TV show in the States, believes UFC's barbaric reputation is undeserved.

He is also particularly scathing about former featherweight world champion McGuigan's claims that UFC involves little more than "rolling around" on the floor.

"There has never been a death or serious injury in UFC and boxing suffers deaths in the ring almost every year," said Bisping, who will be appearing on the Manchester card, which will be broadcast in the UK by Setanta pay-per-view.

"McGuigan is ignorant to the skill, technique and finesse mixed martial arts fighters use in addition to boxing techniques.

"I'd like to invite Barry down to the Wolf's Lair MMA academy where I train in Runcorn and I'd happily do my best to try to educate him as to the various techniques we use."

Other boxing people appreciate MMA more than McGuigan, including prominent American promoter Gary Shaw, who plans to stage mixed discipline shows in the future.

The British boxing fraternity really cannot afford to be complacent, and all who love the sport must hope the emergence of UFC persuades it to address its problems.

verbal · Posted: 25 Apr 2007 11:02 AM Post subject:

It's funny how for years UFC has been attacking the integrity of boxing, and after one boxer has 'call out' a UFC fighter that out of a sudden boxing is now unprofessional and classless.

How many articles has sukurob posted about how great UFC is and how shitty boxing is? Those are direct shots at the sport of boxing, so one man comes out and challanges a UFC fighter to box. Instead, UFC counters by re-raising the ante and changing the sport. The truth is all UFC fighters are scared to step into a boxing ring because they know they won't be able to last 12 championship rounds with the true power and chins of boxing fighters. So instead they choose their arena to 'kick ass.'

As realneo said they will chock them till they turn purple. Notice he didn't say knock em out, because they can't. UFC fighters will have to resort to kicks, and moves to win. Nothing wrong with that, but whatever happened to the old way of fighting with no kicking, and puros putasos.

If any boxer wants to step into the octagon then they should study the defensive maneuvers by Lidell on Ortiz. Ortiz, couldn't take down Lidell, and instead had to fight a boxing fight, which apparently he sucks at. He can't take a hit, and has no power because Lidell was laughing in his face the whole fight. Thus, a boxer will just have to make sure the fight stays up top.

As for Mayweather, can anyone really match his speed in the UFC. That man is way too fast and he has punching power.

As for the last article posted and many previous before that keep stating that UFC keeps outselling boxing. This is true, but still keeps things in perspective. UFC charges 10-20 dollars less per fight, thus more sales. It's like buying a Ford.

verbal · Posted: 30 Apr 2007 09:46 AM Post subject:

Any numbers on the last two UFC fights?

Does the Crop-Cop loss compare to the buzz that Tyson-Douglas generated?

Mars · Posted: 30 Apr 2007 09:55 AM Post subject:

All I have to say about those who think boxing is done, you prolly didn't watch the juan "baby bull" diaz fight on saturday. That dude is only 23 been a champ since 20, fought his best opponent popo fietas and made him quit after the 8th round. The guy just keeps going forward and keeps throwing punches. there are a lot of fighters like diaz that only boxing fans know off, I'm not saying one is better than the other but I believe the biggest strength of MMA is UFC and having centralized leadership.
One would think that the UFC/PRIDE merger would lead to great matchups but I've already heard UFC fans complaining about the up coming UFC's. they are going to run into the same problem that boxing has if they don't put the best against the best. That is what is ruining boxing and it will ruin UFC as well.

verbal · Posted: 07 May 2007 07:18 PM Post subject:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/boxing/la-spw-mmacol3may03,1,6612449.story?coll=la-headlines-sports-boxing

verbal · Posted: 09 May 2007 06:34 AM Post subject: