Randy Couture attempting to lure Hatton into MMA?

[rjj tszyu]

Mercer has been ko'd a couple times in K1 as well, both in the first round I believe.

Skelton was the British number 1, has been British, Commonwealth and European Champion and fought for a legit world title belt, not bad for a guy who started in his 30's.

Incidently he also forayed into MMA and fought in Pride. He lost his only fight in the first round.

I'm not arguing that boxing doesn't have a greater strength in depth than MMA, it does, there has been well over 100 years put into this sport.

But the best MMA practitioners are simply masters of their craft. I'm sure the world's best of each sport don't fight in MMA, i.e the best Ju Jitsu guys compete soley in Ju Jitsu, the best wrestlers in wrestling etc.

But taken as a whole, the entire skill set these guys have (at the top) is formidable and in an absolute sense you would have to consider guys like Silva and Fedor as the best fighters in the world, as their total skill sets are vast.

OK i see where your coming from. But boxer's when they reach the very top tend to be freak athletes. They can do strange things that the body shouldn't be able to do, like throw 25 punches (hooks not pitter patter punches) in 5 seconds. To me due to the relatively low pay in MMA they do not yet have these type of athletes. Not to say that they won't as the sport grows though.

I don't think many of the top boxers can do that to be fair. And regardless I don't see how that is more impressive than the skills of Silva, Cung Lee and Machida?

At the elite of every sport people can do things you shouldn't be able to do. If you're going to judge the talent pool of a sport soley by the athleticism of its top practictioner then surely gynamsts, divers and figure skaters would far and away represent the highest attainable standards for human greatness.

I just find the idea that boxers are better athletes because the elite boxers excell at the art of punching (i.e boxing) is just silly. I mean Lewis Hamilton can do things a human shouldn't be able to do in a race car, and Ronnie O'Sullivan can do things with a snooker cue that are practically an artform but you'd expect them to because they are the absolute cream of their respective sports.

A boxer being better at boxing than an MMA fighter doesn't in any way mean that MMA practictioners are less talented.

Boxing has had literally hundreds of years to progress though, MMA hasn't and is as a result not as polished as boxing IMO.