Randy Couture vs. James Toney Reminds Us That Pure Strikers Rarely Land That Big Punch In The Cage
By: Robert Rousseau Posted On: August 30, 2010 at 10:36amBoxers are truly fun to watch. They are the best at strictly using their hands for striking in the combat sports world. Their abilities are needed in the sport of MMA today, and James Toney, despite getting absolutely dominated by Randy Couture at UFC 118 on Saturday, has some of the best hands to ever see their way into an MMA cage. That said, guess is that there will be a lot of talk about Toney being past his prime now that the event is over. This will compel people to start calling for elite boxers like Manny Pacquiao to step into the cage, as if that would be different. If it was all about hands, then it would be. But before they do this, they need to remember what UFC 118 reminded us all of.
Pure strikers rarely land that big punch when up against a fighter with far superior grappling skills. It can happen, but only like 1 out of 10 times, if that. So unless the Pacquiao’s of the world learn grappling and takedown defense, they, like Toney, won’t get the chance to throw hands. They’ll get dominated.
It’s not about the boxer. It’s about competitors with a complete fighting game vs. those that do not have one.
Keep in mind that this is not an attack on boxing. Boxing is a great sport and a highly valid fighting art. But on Saturday night it wasn’t about the greatness of the striker in the cage, or lack thereof. It was about Toney’s lack of a complete fighting game. Here’s a guy with very limited experience in grappling that had to worry about takedowns that could come at this ankles on up. It was too much for Toney; and it would be too much for any boxer without a significant amount of MMA training to cover.
That said, who wouldn’t love to see an upper echelon boxer really try and learn MMA? The Manny Pacquiao’s of the world, the Floyd Mayweather’s….that would be something. There’s no guaranteeing that they would become proficient at the other things that an MMA fighter must know, but if they ever did….
It might be scary.
Regardless, right now elite boxers would have to be crazy to step into an MMA cage. They make too much money comparatively in boxing to chance it. But as elite MMA fighters begin to make more, who knows what could happen? What we do know is this.
If you’re just going to bring your boxing skills into the cage against a valid MMA fighter, you’re likely to lose. Hitting that one rocket shot when someone like Couture is taking you down with a single leg at your ankles is next to impossible.
Eventually, though, a high level boxer will give MMA its just due and train consistently for a significant period of time before making his debut. And that person will be someone to be reckoned with.
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Comments
It would be saying alot about mma being legitimate if Couture stood up an fought like a man. This was expected by the experts. It was nothing more than a wrestling match. Couture had the opportunity to silence the critics who say an mma fighter doesnt have the skill or courage to stand up with a boxer. In my opinion; Couture and mma came out losing. Toney was an old; fat; slow BOXER; who couldnt kick a soccerball. If you want to see more wrestling and “fighters” too frightend to stand up and trade punches…watch ufc.
“That said, who wouldn’t love to see an upper echelon boxer really try and learn MMA? The Manny Pacquiao’s of the world, the Floyd Mayweather’s….that would be something. There’s no guaranteeing that they would become proficient at the other things that an MMA fighter must know, but if they ever did….”
Yeah, but you want to have your cake and eat it too it doesn’t work that way. If a boxer spends an inordinate amount of time to become ‘great’ at boxing, then he wouldn’t exactly be an mma fighter by definition would he? The inverse of your statement would be if the guy did not spend all that time practicing his boxing skill set then he would not be Mayweather to begin with. You can’t have it both ways. The Pacquiao’s and Mayweather’s of this world are the Pacquiao’s and Mayweather’s of this world exactly because they’ve spent most of their lives trying to become the best boxer possible. So you’re engaging in a little bit of a fantasy here. If they had spent much more time trying to become mma fighters then who says they’ll be the Mayweather’s and Pacquiao’s of boxing? They’d be mma fighters and there’d be some other guys who are the “Mayweather’s” and “Pacquiao’s” of this world but THOSE guys will just specialize in boxing… I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you want to be one of the best in mma, you wouldn’t be a world-class specialist in boxing with multiple titles because there will be OTHER guys in the boxing world spending all the necessary time to become the world-class boxing champions in their profession. So you can’t have it both ways…
Once a boxer learns TD defense, sprawling, grappling, and kicking – he becomes an MMA fighter. You have to be an MMA fighter to have a chance at winning an MMA fight. Boxing is a great sport and a key component of MMA. Key-word being component. Try playing a game of rock-paper-scissors with just scissors. You will always be beaten by a guy with a complete set of tools even if that pair of scissors is made of titanium.
Seems James ” Lights Out ” Toney should be named James ” Taps Out ” Toney…
First of all let’s not pretend that everyone in the UFC is a fighter that has trained for years in multiple disciplines. Brock lesnar is a wrestler with a few months training that has taken over the sport. Many other wrestlers first entered with rather minimal training in anything else. So this is about grappling arts vs striking, not mixture vs non-mixture.
As for Toney being past his prime, maybe you need to actually learn a little about Boxing and it’s fighters before you bother to write an article like this. The only people that pumped Toney up were in the MMA community, the Boxing community wanted nothing to do with this. Even you’re fellow MMA writers seem to know more about Toney than you do. Boxing gave you two of our scraps, long past their prime, and you couldn’t even take them out without one of them Koing your 2 time champ. Now your bragging about what you could do against a real Boxer?
Why is the matter concerning Boxing difficult to grasp? Every other combative style in MMA has been assessed based upon how THE BEST in that style have performed except Boxing. The reason ofcourse is because Boxers get paid more than fighters in any other combat sport. Nevertheless, fighting guys 20 years past their prime, and shot fighters now struggling with bums and no names in the Boxing ring doesen’t cut it.
I’ll perk up when you actually come up with proof for these claims.