The somewhat controlled battle between UFC President Dana White and WBC Welterweight and Super welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. has opened a new chapter as of late, effectively spiraling out of control and towards a legitimate fight. For those of you needing to brush up on the topic, read Irish Whip original articles "Articulation of the year" and "Why would he go home and watch basketball?". For those of you too lazy to click, to recap, Mayweather bashed on Chuck Liddell, stated he would give Liddell a million dollars if he beat a heavyweight boxer from his promotion, and said that the UFC “ain’t shit”. White came back with a challenge of having one of Mayweather Promotions’ heavyweights fight Liddell under MMA rules.
IBF World Welterweight Champion Kermit Cintron has stated he would like to accept Dana White's challenge put forward to face UFC Lightweight Champion Sean Sherk. “I want the fight,” said Cintron. “I can wrestle. I can box. I can beat those UFC fighters at their own game. Tell Mr. White to make me an offer and I’ll take on his guy after I fight Matthysse on July 14.” IBF Welterweight champion Cintron has a professional boxing record of 27-1-0 with 25 wins coming by knock out.
While I think Cintron is out of his mind for throwing his name into the proverbial hat and should have listened to his elder (who could still kick his ass), I'm absolutely delighted that he lacked the thought process necessary to prevent him from accepting the challenge. As each flamboyant, overconfident boxer enters the fray, we become one step closer to actually seeing this circus take place. Liddell vs. Rampage is all well and good, but boxing vs. MMA would end the debate that the UFC was created to answer.
2 Comments:
This would definitely be a ppv that I would order. There has always been controversy with the quality of the fighters between MMA and boxing, but this is on another level.
But it is HUGE for UFC that Bernard Hopkins came out and said that he would lose to an MMA guy. Think about it..every boxer has a huge ego (Ali, Tyson, etc...) And for a very well known boxer to say that he would get his ass kicked will make people want to check out how tough UFC actually is.
I say that Dana White should have to pay Hopkins for saying this, because it is promoting UFC to a huge extent. Think about what he said! He said the WORST GUY IN UFC could tear him up (and he tore up huge names in boxing like Felix Trinidad, Antonio Tarver, and Oscar de la Hoya)
This is great for UFC (and MMA), and an MMA vs. boxing match would be something that I would LOVE to see. Great post.
Not only is this great for MMA, it's great for boxing. We all know that boxing is on a respirator and at this point, piggybacking off of the UFC might be the best it can do. The IBF (the governing body for which Cintron is a champion) needs to make htis happen more than the UFC does.
It should be noted that this fight would either feature Sherk in a boxing ring or Cintron in an Octagon. It would not, unfortunately, be a combination of the two. For that, you'll have to go back to UFC 1-4 where all "styles" were individually represented, compared to now, where there is a hybridization of styles. The world was shocked when Jiu-Jitsu expert Royce Gracie defeated heavier greco-roman wrestler Dan Severn in one of the earlier UFC events. The Cintron-Sherk fight could stimulate similar interest in both sports if marketed and produced correctly.
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