Originally Posted by Uke

Floyd Mayweather is the best boxer of this new era. No arguments. But I don't even have to go to him to demonstrate what I was saying. Mickey Ward is hardly a great or even good boxer. He was a journeyman, or what boxing folk like to call an "opponent". He beat Arturo Gatti in their first and greatest match. It wouldn't take a great boxer to beat either of them. Just a decent boxer like Demarcus Corely.

But I think you're missing the point. The point is that there is a clear line that is drawn when it comes to recreational skill and honed skill. When you begin saying that people like Vitor Belfort and Don Frye are "great" boxers, you imply that those two are among the great boxers, which is ridiculous. You have no basis to state that, as you have never even seen them fight against subpar boxers, let alone against great boxers. Those two at their current level of skill are no match for even lower tier pro boxers. They are tough, but they are MMA fighters, not boxers. .

Originally Posted by Uke

Another thing, thowing a punch makes you a boxer about as much as thowing a kick makes you a Tae Kwon Do master. Just because these guys punch doesn't make them boxers by a longshot. While Vitor Belfort may have a boxing background in Brazil, he CLEARLY does not want to pursue a future in boxing. Now, I've stated this before and gotten mixed responses. The most bizarre being that he doesn't care about money and might like 200k over 2 million. You're free to believe whatever you like, but more than likely Belfort realized that he isn't the boxing dynamo that many of you would like to believe. He may be better than alot of the other MMA fighters in terms of boxing, but that isn't really saying a whole lot, now is it? Vitor knows he has a much better shot at being a MMA star than he'd ever have at being a boxing star.

The same applies in martial arts as well. There are much better athletes and fighters in TMA than MMA fighters and advocates would have you believe. If anyone believes that all traditional martial artists had weak technique and were soft hitting sparring partners until MMA came around, then they didn't know anything to begin with. When you leave the McDojos alone and search out quality schools with excellent instruction, you can find excellent fighters in all disciplines. Jujitsu. Tae Kwon Do. Karate. Aikido. Kung Fu. They're out there. But you have the guys who never trained before the UFC who are the ones creating myths about what works and what doesn't.

Don't believe that Tae Kwon Do works? Go to Korea and challenge their national team to a all out match. You'd probably be killed.

Don't believe Karate is effective in this day and age? Tell that to Grandmaster Steve Muhammad, one of Ed Parker's top fighters and the man that Bruce Lee said had the fastest hands he'd ever seen. Or to Taika Seiyu Oyata, who is the real deal, not like George Dillman. George Dillman created his whole style by following Taika Oyata around the country and attending his seminars. After he felt as though he ripped off enough, he began his own.

I've personally read on this site where some people have dismissed Aikido as just fluff and tradition. That immediately let's me know that have little exposure to the art. As bad as Segal's movies have gotten of the years, he is a very proficient and legitimate teacher and fighter. Another excellent school of Aikido I had the good fortune to work with was Mushaba Force. These young gentlemen were very soft spoken, but incredibly vicious in their execution of the soft art. They were very, very impressive.

There are other syles of Kung Fu that are combat applicable other than Wing Chun. There is Crane. There is Eagle Claw. But one based in NY is a very vicious and intense system called Fu Jow Pai. Its head was Master Wai Hong, later by Tak. These guys are great fighters, but the closed door students are the ones who really receive the best schooling. This school can be seen on "The Warrior Within", the tribute to Bruce Lee by various top martial artists.

These people I listed are all fanatics. They are very serious about their training and teaching. They are overachievers in their fields. And they are just a few I listed. If you've ever had the pleasure to train with any of these people you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. They seem almost supernatural in their execution. But many who don't know think that the pinnacle of TMA training looks like Fred Ettish and Scott Wizard from the early UFC's.

I still stand by what I previously wrote: If you have not reached, experienced or witnessed a higher, more proficient level of mastery, then there is no way to accurately gauge skill because you have nothing to base it off of. Calling Belfort a great boxer was 10 times worse than calling Gatti a great boxer. While neither are great boxers, Gatti's at least a player on the board.