Sherdog has posted an interview with “The King of the Streets” Marco Ruas regarding his IFL fight Saturday night against Maurice Smith. As a reminder I will be attending the event from “press row” and will post results and live show impressions.
I don’t think that Ruas/Smith exactly ranks as a “must-see” fight but should be interesting at the very least.
Post your comments on how you see this bout going…
In other news Dana White has made some comments that I found odd regarding boxers coming into MMA.
Informed that Cintron is the current IBF Welterweight Champion, White replied, “Which means what? What does that mean? It means nothing. I mean, when they’re calling us out now, obviously it’s a good thing.” Of course referring to boxing’s numerous attempts to piggyback MMA’s popularity.
I guess I don’t really get why Dana would take these digs at Kermit Cintron who recently on MMAWeekly Radio spoke very highly of the UFC and seemed genuinely interested in the fight. My main problem here is that Dana is throwing out these challenges for a boxer to “step up” and now that one has expressed interest he uses it as an opportunity to bash boxing. I really stand firmly behind the thought that MMA doesn’t have to view boxing as competition for viewers any more than pro wrestling. The audiences cross over to a degree but there are still those who only like their own “entertainment” be that boxing or professional wrestling.
Maybe it is just me wanting to defend boxing a little but I think Dana is coming across like a bit of a hypocrite here. A part of me wonders if he actually doesn’t want to see a top 10 boxer fight in the UFC because with every fight starting on the feet there is a legit chance that the boxer could win with an early and quick KO. I personally don’t think a fighter who is strictly a boxer would win, but I think people who write the idea off as impossible are being very blind to the very real possibility.
One other thought…if a boxer like Cintron were to begin training for an MMA fight, learning takedown defense and enough of a ground game to hopefully survive on the ground, would he not then actually be a mixed martial artist? I don’t remember too many people crapping all over Cro Cop when he was basically nothing more than a kickboxer at the begining of his MMA career. All it took Mirko was some takedown defense and he suddenly became a top 10 level heavyweight.
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