Issue 084
January 2012
Plenty of successful, active MMA fighters have dabbled in boxing – Nick Diaz, Vitor Belfort, Anderson Silva and Jens Pulver amongst others. But, there’s been a rag-tag bunch of pugilists going the other direction with varying success
1 ART JIMMERSON
The famous, one-gloved Art Jimmerson has gone down in MMA folklore as the ill-informed buffoon from UFC 1 who tapped out to Royce Gracie’s mount. Spooked by a quick pre-fight takedowns demo from John McCarthy who was helping promoter Rorion Gracie behind the scenes for the show, Jimmerson earned his $20,000 guaranteed purse (far higher than others because Rorion was so keen on a boxer being Royce’s first victim) with a feeble two-minute display of posturing and then immediately quitting when things went south in order to ensure his health for a forthcoming boxing bout. A national Golden Gloves champion in 1983, Jimmerson turned professional in ’85 and retired in 2002 as a 33-18 journeyman. Holder of a couple of minor titles, Jimmerson recently moved to California to help coach boxing at one of the official UFC Gym locations.
2 JAMES WARRING
A dull boxer who some say owed his world title reign to the shallow talent pool of an unglamorous division, James Warring entered 1995’s World Combat Championships one-night no-holds-barred tournament as a former IBF cruiserweight champion sporting a 16-3-1 record. He made it to the night’s final, surprisingly stopping submission expert and proto MMA legend Erik Paulson along the way in a then-epic (in duration only) 16-minute semi-final, most memorable for Warring’s continued, and legal, hair-pulling to control Paulson on the ground. Then, in the tournament final, much smaller Renzo Gracie took down, mounted and choked him in a little under three minutes. Returning to boxing for a few more fights, Warring (who had also won a few kickboxing titles in the ‘80s and fought Vitali Klitschko, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Peter Aerts under those rules) retired from fighting altogether in 1997.
3 JEREMY WILLIAMS
Victim of a genuinely scary one-shot KO by Samuel Peter that ended his career in 2004, Jeremy Williams challenged for a few minor versions of the sport’s splintered heavyweight title, losing inside the distance each time. Henry Akinwande stopped him in three to lift the vacant WBO prize in 1996, blubbery Danish boxing hero Brian Neilson finished him in five for the IBC belt and Peter took the vacant NABF trinket with that crushing left hand. Ending his boxing career with an impressive (on paper at least) 42-5-1 record with 35 wins inside the distance, ‘Half Man, Half Amazing’ fought five times under MMA rules, winning all five inside the distance. However, he never fought name opposition, largely competed on Hawaiian undercards and disappeared from the scene in early 2008, aged 35.
4 JAMES TONEY
Freely admitting he’d lambast any rival promoter who booked James ‘Lights Out’ Toney in this sort of freak show MMA vs boxing fight, Dana White nonetheless found himself promoting Toney’s August 2010 UFC 118 clash with Randy Couture. By far the best boxer to ever step into the cage, Toney was The Ring magazine ‘Fighter of the Year’ in both 1991 and 2003 and his 24-year career has seen him win major world titles at middleweight (1991), super-middleweight (1993) and cruiserweight (2003) and a steroid test failure cost him the WBA heavyweight title after he’d decisioned champion John Ruiz in 2005. But by the time he made his UFC debut he was almost 42, out of shape and likely more keen on short-term gain than a career. The fight itself looked much like Renzo vs Warring, ending with a Couture side choke in just over three minutes.
5 RAY MERCER
Heavyweight hard nut ‘Merciless’ Ray Mercer is best known in boxing circles for his 1988 Olympic gold medal, his brutal fifth-round annihilation of Tommy Morrison in 1991, an epic brawl with Evander Holyfield and his close decision loss to Lennox Lewis in ’96. But to MMA fans he’ll forever be remembered for his nine-second KO of embarrassingly bloated former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia in June 2009. Yes, aged 48, in only his first ‘official’ MMA fight (he’d been choked out by fighting Kimbo Slice in what was recorded as an exhibition MMA bout two years earlier), Mercer felled the taller man with a huge right hand that seriously rocked Sylvia’s big-leagues career.
