The Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia captured my attention in a way that no previous Olympiad had. As a new fan of “The Sport”, I took a particular interest in the boxing and taekwondo events as sources of future kickboxing talent. Naturally, a gold-medal boxer would move to professional boxing, but the ever-aggressive K-1 would surely “make a move on the other fighters,” I thought. Taekwondo didn’t look like a fit because of the excess equipment, but if a TKD fighter decided to turn professional, he would likely move to kickboxing, not boxing.

It hit me, however, that the gold medalist would fare no better than the silver or bronze medalists in professional fighting. I imagined an 8-man TKD tournament. Under TKD rules, one champion would rise above the others to seize the crown. Next, I imagined the exact same tournament with the same fighters, but under kyokushin rules. I quickly realized that the skills that would bring success in the TKD tournament would be less essential in the kyokushin tournament. Resistance to pain would replace the chest protector. Power kickers would get the judges favor over the rapid-fire point collectors. Lastly, I imagined the same 8 TKD fighters entering an 8-man boxing tournament. Again, different skills would decide the outcome. Their chins, for starters, would be tested. In brief, it became clear that the same individuals in a TKD tournament, a kyokushin and a boxing tournament would produce 3 different champions despite keeping all the conditions, besides the rules, the same.

With so much discussion on message boards about how a heavyweight boxer would fail, survive or prevail in the sport of kickboxing; it has become one of those message board topics that won’t accept the obvious conclusion. If superior punching skills were not enough for Bernardo to beat Ignashov or Botha to beat Fujimoto, it is illogical to assume that even better boxing would make a difference, yet this is what many believe. It is like saying a hunter couldn’t hit a partridge with a .22 because his eyesight was near blind and that the solution is to equip him with a higher caliber rifle.

“A boxer”, moreover, has become a nameless entity who has the punching power of Ernie Shavers, the chin of George Chavalo, the stamina of Jack Dempsey, the skills of Joe Louis and the foot speed of Ali. He can yell, “Shazam!” and fast-track through kickboxing essentials such as kicks, knees, grappling, leads and angles. The better he is at the sport of boxing, the more success he would have at kickboxing. If it took him 10 years to learn the game called “boxing”, he would pick up kickboxing in 2 years.

The truth is that the undefined entity called “boxer” doesn’t exist. Boxers are men who must sweat in a gym in hopes of reducing the risk of injury in the ring. They are no less vulnerable to punches than the extent of their training. Although it is safe to say that boxers are better at boxing than kickboxers, it is false to assume that boxers are invincible to punches. Nearly every time two boxers meet in the ring, one uses punches to defeat the other. Highly trained boxers can and are defeated with punches. Sometimes it is the constant barrage of punches. Sometimes it is the one big shot. Boxers are beaten with punches and they don’t always come from the more skilled fighter. Lewis lost to Rahman. Ali lost to Spinks. When asked who hit the hardest: Tyson, Lewis or LeBanner, Botha gave the most unexpected reply, “Azziz Khattou.” Punches, in general, are dangerous.

One of the most misguided opinions that continues to resurface is that a better boxer than, say, Mike Bernardo would have more success as a kickboxer. In most cases, it is the result of not thinking through all the factors and thus leaping to a hasty conclusion. In fact, it usually boils down to a fan saying, “Holyfield is a better boxer than Bernardo. Bernardo beat Aerts 3 out of 6 times, so Holyfield would beat Aerts 4, 5, or 6 times.”  

Those who feel the boxer would stand almighty in the kickboxing ring tend to base their opinion on a few beliefs.

1-       There are more boxers worldwide
2-       It is an older sport
3-       The money is much better
4-       Boxing records are spiked.

Indeed, there are more boxers worldwide if we count all the weight divisions. The heavyweight division has suffered for years. The NBA, NFL and NHL have thrived with 30 teams each. They and all their minor league teams have absorbed many of the best heavy athletes. When Joe Louis was heavyweight champion, he was undoubtedly the greatest heavy athlete in the world. Chris Byrd, cannot boast the same title. He is at the top of a list in 2005, an era where obesity is a near pandemic and the pool of fighters has greatly diminished. Boxrec ranks 1052 professional heavyweight boxers worldwide while the CKO lists 250 kickboxers. Most likely the boxing figure is overstated and the kickboxing figure is understated for the same reason, problems collecting data. In any case, the larger number is often misinterpreted to mean that boxing has higher quality when it more reasonably means they have a wider base.

Boxing is an older sport in terms of organization. However, in terms of techniques, kickboxing and boxing share many of the same techniques. A jab is a jab. An uppercut is an uppercut. Although kicks are now more recognized worldwide, there have been pockets of cultures where the techniques have been tried and tested as long as the punching techniques in the west. Furthermore, no matter how old boxing is, each athlete cannot stack the experience of previous generations. Some extent of reinventing the wheel must be done. The man (or boy) must put on the hand wraps for the first time and start working the heavy bag just like Joe Louis did. A boxer with 8 years training will have just that, 8 years training for the highly specialized sport of boxing.

The money in boxing is much better if one is heavyweight champion. No kickboxer has made $30 million for a fight. In fact, very few boxers have. In 1970, Frazier defended his title against Ali in a fight that saw both fighters earn $2.5 million. Considering the growth in salaries for players in the NHL, NBA, and NFL over 35 years, every boxer in the top 30 must make $2.5 million per fight, right? Wrong. No one in the top 10 earns $2.5 million unless he is the heavyweight challenger in a match for both world titles (WBC and IBF) and the super title (WBA). It is true that boxing has a bigger carrot to inspire their ponies, but in terms of how much hay is being eaten, kickboxing [especially the K-1 promotional company] pays as well as boxing promoters if not better.

Records in boxing are primarily designed to mislead the novice fans. It is one of the weakest parts of the sport, not the strongest. Fighters waste an insane amount of time to create a spike in the win column before they can get anything challenging enough to be called a fight. Kickboxers have the privilege of entering tournaments worldwide or even the World Grand Prix. They are regularly on a collision course with the best in the world. Some boxers thrive on beating opponents where the odds are 9 to 1 that they will win and boast .900 records or better. These individuals will see no quit when they face a kickboxer with a .600 record who has been in ring wars.

On most boxing forums, one can discuss how the face of boxing changed when bouts decreased in length from 15 to 12 rounds. Many of the recent champions who have won the various titles wouldn’t have become title holders if they had to fight 3 more rounds. Similar debates bring other changes under the microscope: the 3-knockdown rule, the standing eight count and even the addition of gloves.

To determine how well boxers would adapt to a rule set as different as kickboxing, it is preferable to walk through each of the changes one at a time. Look at the top 50 from the IBO and imagine that boxing matches were suddenly changed in the following ways.

The spinning backfist is added to the arsenal

The only punch that is not allowed in boxing today. This is a minor change to the rules and will produce a few different results. Had it been permitted since the beginning, the lineage of champions would surely be different simply because of the number of championship matches. Some of the boxers with the natural capacity to throw spinning backhands would score on those without the capacity to develop the required alertness and defense.

From 12 rounds to 5 rounds.

The ranking [assuming any boxing ranking is a best to worst list] would change instantly. The number of knockouts would drop off the charts. Tyson’s grip on the 1980s might have never existed with this format. He lost many early rounds to speedy punchers. To be fair, we can’t say every boxer who was behind on the scorecards after five rounds would have lost if he were in a 5-round bout. Some fighters sacrifice early rounds in order to do more damage in the later rounds. In a 5-round fight, they would surely pick up the pace. The same can be said for fighters who didn’t make it out of the 5th round. Many were probably pacing themselves and withholding some attacks that may have turned the fight.

Scoring is by damage

If one punches like raindrops, he can’t win a round. The fighter who has dished out the most damage takes the round. The hard hitters will slide up the chart and the point collectors will slide down the list.

Grappling is allowed

In boxing, the best grapplers are the ones who can use their weight effectively yet subtly. In other words, they have to do it without taking a warning from the referee. In kickboxing, there is no reason to be subtle. Pushing is permitted as is pulling. Generally speaking, a kickboxer can throw his opponent anywhere but down. If boxing suddenly allowed grappling, stronger men would take advantage of the rule. Those with weak legs, backs and necks would be manhandled, exhausted and subsequently beaten.

Knees to the body are allowed

With this rule change, shorter fighters who never had to worry about taking body shots would suddenly find that tall grapplers would have one more advantage. Nearly all of Tyson’s opponents were tall men who could barely reach the body and found it impossible to catch the moving head. Under these new rules, they would have been able to grab the head and work the body with knees. Ranking lists would show the individuals using these techniques moving up the list and the shorter dropping.

Knees to the head are allowed

The boxing rankings once again change as the bobbers and weavers simply get grabbed, kneed to the head and pushed off repeatedly. Those who can adapt to the rule will move up the list, those who don’t have the capacity to defend will fall down the list.

High and Mid Kicks are allowed

Every boxer who spent years learning head movement would now have to face the danger of bobbing and weaving into a highkick. They would also have to learn to block kicks correctly as it is possible for an arm to be broken. Shin on wrist is not an experience to be taken lightly. Those who would become good kickers would move up the list while those who continued to depend on weaving or failed to learn proper blocking would fall on the list.

Low kicks are allowed

Low kicks are an ideal weapon to break an opponent’s balance, test his pain tolerance and distract him from punches. In terms of damage, low kicks can have an immediate effect on some such as Kit Lytkins [vs. Akio Mori]. On others, the damage must stack before the effects are felt. Boxers who embraced these techniques would move up the list while those who failed to develop proper checking would slide down the list.

To summarize, we’ve explored how boxing rankings would shift with each change in rules. We added the spinning backfist, reduced the fight to 5 rounds, included grappling, permitted knees, allowed high/mid kicks and finally added low kicks. We can imagine how the rankings would appear with each rule change, with combinations of changes or with all the changes employed at once. We would most likely see boxing undergo an evolution similar to the NHB-MMA evolution in the 90s where Brazilian Jujitsu dominated, was later challenged by American wrestling and even stand up fighters. Now the athletes who train specifically for MMA lead the sport. If boxing accepted all the changes discussed above, they too would see an evolution. One group, those good at pulling and pushing I presume, would enjoy a temporary dominance until the evolution would be complete.

The last step in our experiment, the one many jump to first, is to then consider how these boxers would handle these changes against experts of these changes. In horse racing, the winner wins by a nose yet earns 10 times the prize of the #2 horse. Although the boxing rankings make it appear that the champion and the #50 ranked boxer are very far apart, the difference is not 50 times but 50 noses. This can be illustrated by looking at the number of points the IBO and Boxrec gives to the #1 and #50 ranked fighters. Both the IBO and Boxrec have point systems to measure the quality of fighter achievements and subsequently rank them. Neither shows the #1 boxer with 50 times the score of the #50 boxer.

Moreover, being a nose (or a few noses) ahead in one game will not give much of an edge in a different game.

No athlete has an easy time with transfers. NFL, NBA, and NHL entry drafts are often crap shoots. Luc Robataille, for instance, was picked 171st and went on to become arguably the best left winger in the history of the NHL. In boxing, Olympic success does not guarantee professional success. Few today recognize the names Henry Tillman or Willie De Wit, the 1984 Olympic gold and silver medalists. In these cases, we are looking at vertical transfers from amateur to professional. The skill sets remain the same though they are expected to meet more mature athletes who call the sport their jobs. No matter how hard it is to succeed with a vertical transfer, horizontal transfers are much more difficult. Wayne Gretzky would not have been called the Great One if his coach decided to make him play defense instead of forward. A winning team in any sport could become the worst team in history if the players all switched positions. Horizontal changes outside the sport are even more difficult to make. If the top ten squash players all quit and entered racquetball, they would all have an enormous amount of adjusting to do despite any similarities between the two games. Each player’s success would have very little relation to his rank in squash.

Let’s see how the boxer would handle the transition. At this point, it is safe to say that different readers will have reached different conclusions. Some will still cling to the belief that one of the 3 boxing champions would still best represent boxing even under a different rule set. Others will have systematically scouted a boxer with the right package of skills to handle the task. You will compare your choice or choices to the 4 basic fight styles in kickboxing: 3 specialists and the generalist.

PUNCHING SPECIALISTS

One of the first errors novice fans make is to conclude that punching specialists such as Mike Bernardo and Ray Sefo are boxers. They are not. They may have some boxing background, but they are kickboxers. They are permitted to use the full range of kickboxing techniques yet elect to specialize on the hands. Moreover, they specialize in using punches while defending against other varieties of specialists and generalists. It is unlikely to see a punching specialist to square off and fight an experienced boxer at his own game.  That would be an error in judgment. A more likely scenario would be to see the punching specialist lure the boxer into a boxing stance and take advantage of the exposed kick targets. In other words, a punching specialist may box for 2 or 3 exchanges and unlearn the boxer. As soon as the boxer reverted back to old habits, he would begin to absorb low kicks. When Bernardo fought boxing sideshow Eric Esch, he used low kicks throughout the bout and finished off with a high kick. Fans expected a boxer versus boxer type match, but Bernardo saw different openings and felt no obligation to use anything less than the most effective attacks.

KICKING SPECIALISTS

Good kick specialists like Feitosa will be at a disadvantage in terms of punching skills. They often are. Their goals will be to put hard kicks on the opposing boxer’s forearm to keep him from using half his weapons. The boxer will have to invest a lot of time to learn to block kicks properly. Furthermore, most expert kickboxers have trouble seeing Feitosa’s highkicks. It is reasonable to assume a novice kickboxer, despite a stellar boxing record, would have even more difficulty seeing the kicks. Head movement is terribly dangerous as it not only swings the head into kicking range, but also puts the fighters weight on one leg, a stance where blocking low kicks is impossible. One can’t lift a leg if he is leaning his weight on it. Very few boxers will be able to handle the brutal low kicks of Nick Pettas. In boxing, a barrage of punches to the body over several rounds can weaken a fighter’s legs. In kickboxing; punches, knees and kicks also indirectly tax the legs, but low kicks speed up the process with direct strikes. If Shannon Briggs felt uncomfortable taking low kicks from Tom Erikson (a wrestler), Pettas would make him suffer enormously.

GRAPPLING SPECIALISTS

Grappling specialists like Alexei Ignashov or Remy Bonjasky are big strong men. They like to swing from an opponents head and dish out punishment. Many boxers have cardiovascular endurance, but they would have their muscular stamina tested against fighters like this. In other words, Remy would wear them out, not tire them out. When Tom Erikson fought former boxing champ Shannon Briggs, the kickboxing community expected a pull-knee-push-kick pattern from Erikson. Instead, he fought from the outside, allowed the boxer to take any angle desired and paid the price quickly. The outcome of the fight may have been still in Briggs favor since Erikson was a novice. However, there is no doubt that the match would have been very different if the wrestler had chosen to fight as a grappling specialist rather than as a kicking specialist.

GENERALISTS

Lastly, we can ponder how the boxers would do against the generalists. These are the fighters who are good at everything such as Hoost, Aerts and the late Andy Hug. The most decorated kickboxers are the generalists. They have very tight defense and very effective offense. Any weakness on the part of an opponent can be exposed. Against boxers, they would be facing men with novice grappling, tender legs and no experience against kicks. In terms of defense, one of the reasons kickboxing is so difficult is that the fighter’s concentration cannot focus only on the hands as in boxing. Alertness is much more complex and the generalists not only inflict physical punishment, but they also mentally wear their opponents down. Hug, for example, used a wide variety of non-lethal strikes like the Ax Kick and Spinning Backhand to mentally fatigue his opponents.

At this point, one may be tempted to leap to the conclusion that boxers would lose to kickboxers. To be fair to these athletes, let’s not judge them all as a group. Every boxing pundit knows that there are different boxing styles. Tyson and Ali were both champions of the same sport [ignoring the different length of the bouts] and they excelled with different styles. We can even go beyond subgroups. There are more differences between any two individuals than there are between any two groups. That is a fact of nature. There are more differences between turkey and beef than there are between all meats and all fruits.  Likewise, there are more differences between Bonjasky and Hoost than there are between all boxers and all kickboxers.

LEARNING CURVE

One story that is etched into my memory is that of a judoist I met. He first took a liking to the sport of judo in his 20s while watching the Seoul Olympics on television in 1988. By 1992, he had trained and qualified for the Barcelona Games. I don’t know if John was the only one to develop so quickly, but I am sure nearly all the beginners like him failed to qualify for the Olympic Games including the children who dominate women’s gymnastics.

Some boxers picked up pugilism very quickly at a later age while others put on gloves before puberty and developed steadily over time. We can theorize who among these two groups would have the steepest learning curves. It is safe to say that the speed of learning kickboxing techniques and the order of boxers on the IBO list correlate very poorly. Every boxer on the list has an invisible capacity to learn. We don’t know who is brilliant and open to new skills and who is rigid. Some will absorb instruction like sponges. Others will resist in favor of deeply-rooted beliefs. Some may be naturals in any environment while others despite having the desire may turn out to be as limited as Michael Jordan in baseball.

If a boxer were to enter kickboxing, he would likely become a punching specialist though nothing would stop him from becoming a full fledged generalist save the limits of his learning curve. Botha appears to be on track to become a punching specialist. Pele Ried, on the other hand, seemed to embrace chambered (flicky) kicks.

THE GAUNTLET

Let's choose one fighter from the top 10 and see how he would do. Many will select Vitali Khlitchko based on his success in boxing and experience as a kickboxer. These same people may not know that he never fought world class kickboxing talent or that he was knocked out cold by Pele Ried. If you prefer to choose someone outside the top ten, say David Tua, so much the better. Keep in mind that the kickboxers selected below are to give a clearer picture of how the individuals would handle the new rules, the specialists, the generalists and the learning curve.  

WBA	WBC	IBF
John Ruiz	Vitali Klitschko	Chris Byrd

Now that the hypothetical boxer has gone through the gauntlet, it is time to notice the win-win situation. If the K-1 managed to grab David Tua with his last 10 fights as a kickboxer, the boxing world would have to concede that Tua had become an ex-boxer. If John Ruiz refused to come back after his first experience with low kicks, the boxing world would have to acknowledge that unattainable money, history, breadth of talent and exaggerated records are not enough to make bold statements regarding defeating other professionals at their own sports.

Interesting enough, it is not the sport of kickboxing that is against the ropes. Boxing fans may be confident that any top 10 fighter can handle any K-1 fighter, but no boxing promoter is making any real effort to prove it. The K-1, however, is on the move. Boxing says, “would” and K-1 says, “will”. Boxing says, “if” and K-1 says, “when”. They have invited former boxing champions to fight under K-1 rules. Mike Tyson was to fight Bob Sapp in 2004 and Evander Holyfield was invited to fight Peter Aerts in 1999. Although, neither fight was realized, the K-1 has been successful at luring less prominent champions and contenders. Many of these fighters such as Frans Botha have been on the downside of their boxing careers. The future will show the K-1 moving more aggressively on younger and younger contenders until they have access to the entire top 10 of boxing. Botha is in his mid thirties and in time fighters in their early thirties or even late 20s will make the move. The K-1 will continue to pursue better and better fighters. The K-1 is not interested in who would win but rather who will win. Fights are won in the ring, not on internet message boards.

One day a boxer will step into the K-1 ring and win the big fights and prove himself the elite of two sports. In the meantime, we will witness boxers having success and failures that are completely unrelated to any kickboxing ranking.

KICKBOXING VS. BOXING CHRONICLE Finally, let’s observe the history of the K-1 scouting and experimentation of boxers. In some cases, the matchup is nothing less than throwing the boxer to the wolves. In other cases a degree of nurturing can be seen.

Francois Botha