The Ring is Counted Out: Boxing’s duplicity devours an honest magazine

Boxers need to need to spend five rounds rolling around on the floor with each other.

 

No, MMA is popular because of the charisma of its leader and the way it is marketed, combined with the disastrous way boxing has conducted and marketed itself in the meantime. MMA matches for the most part are a slog

 

Agreed, but the MMA types seem to know how to give the fans a show, how to make it seem as if they are getting their money's worth, even if, as Dools points out, many of the matches are slogs or over in a heartbeat.

Who knows how much money I have shelled out over the years for closed-circuit or PPV cards that featured horrific undercards that stretched all night and main events that were often boring, or in the case of many a Don King promotion, subject to endings that were more than a little suspicious.

 

This is where there's an upside to boxing's alphabet soup. There are some checks and balances, and The Ring, until now, was above that. Not the case with MMA, where UFC has virtually no competition, save for Strikeforce and Bellator. There's a few regional groups, like Gladiator Challenge here on the coast, but it's like the minor leagues in baseball, looking to develop talent. But with UFC's dominance, we're pretty much forced to take their word when it comes to rankings.