I love the fights. Boxing, MMA, Karate. You name it, I love the fights. I love the idea of a mano a mano contest, where one guy (or gal) looks the other in the eye and the other guy (or gal) sees the badassitude in that guy’s (or gal’s) eyes and the full intent to kick ass. And the guy (or gal) has to show their own badassitude to the opponent and take the responsibility, single handedly, to stop the opponent.
It is always an interesting experience for me when I watch different fighting arts back to back or even at the same time, flipping back and forth. This evening, I was watching boxing side by side with MMA, flipping back and forth. Different experiences, same thrill. The thrill of watching the 2 opponents go at it, understanding what each is doing, and seeing what they are trying to do work (or not) is a fascinating thing. Often, the fight plan (or lack of) gets much clearer much sooner in boxing than in MMA.
In MMA, you are often first waiting to see what tool set the fighter is working with (I have expressed thoughts about this in this blog before) and then figure out what the strategy is. In boxing, because the fighters are only limited to stand up, you are working with a smaller universe of possible strategies. If you have a good eye for the game, you will see a lot of things very clearly very fast. You will begin to get the sense for a fighter’s badassitude pretty quickly and discern what they are trying to do and how. And you tend to see hpwt the opponent is also doing to counter.
I come back to the question often debated – which fighting art provides a more accurate test of the skills involved? Boxing without question does a better job. But as to which art provides more excitement? My answer would be – give me 2 very good fighters, and no matter the fighting art, I am going to have a good time watching.
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