Issue 038

June 2008

“I’m not going to challenge Tiger Woods to a fight, if I wanted to challenge him, I’d play golf” – Don Frye

Frye’s quote rings true with almost everyone in the civilised world. If you’re going to challenge a man, you challenge him at his game – that’s the nature of a challenge. I wouldn’t challenge Chuck Liddell to a game of Madden ‘08 or Guitar Hero. I’d challenge him to a fight. People have faired well in their challenges (like Randy Couture vs. Tim Sylvia), others have failed horribly (like I would if I challenged Chuck).

A challenge that has the entire fight world talking is UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva challenging the former multiple title-holder and all-time great boxer, Roy Jones Jr. But is it really worth it?

You ask anyone involved in the fight world with an unbiased opinion and Jones Jr. defeats Silva, with not many giving Silva a chance. Silva’s mixed martial arts (MMA) record is 21-4-0 with 12 of those wins coming via KO or stoppage, but the vast majority of those came from knees and kicks (and one absolutely beautiful elbow). Silva doesn’t tend to finish with his fists.  Compare that with Jones’s boxing record of 56-4-0 (with 38 stoppages) and the silver medal in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.  So the question that needs to be asked is this – who’s really going to win?

From Anderson Silva’s perspective, a fight with Roy Jones Jr. is going to generate a hell of a lot of publicity, and we all know the old adage, “Any publicity is good publicity”. If he wins, the already popular Silva is going to explode in the mainstream, with perhaps only his rudimentary English holding him back, and even then, people can’t help but love Anderson Silva.

If the likely event of Silva losing should happen, public perception could go either way depending on the way Silva should lose. If Jones batters Silva with relative ease, then Silva is a guy who couldn’t hang with boxers, and will be denigrated by boxing elitists. On the other hand, if Silva was to lose but came out of it looking like Rocky Balboa in his first fight with Apollo Creed, he could still enjoy the aforementioned elevated mainstream profile, perhaps along with a movie and even an iconic poster to boot. 

With Anderson Silva’s perspective come the people he represents, the UFC as a business, and the credibility of the sport of mixed martial arts. If Silva were to win, the sport would get a tremendous shot in the arm, a whole new audience who previously derided the sport as “a bar room brawl”, “glorified street fighting” and the ever-popular “human cockfighting”. 

As a business, the UFC would house ‘The man who beat the legendary Roy Jones Jr. in his first boxing bout’, and as Mike Goldberg once said, “You know Roy Jones Jr. respects the hands of Forrest Griffen”. The UFC would be pretty set – it would gain a huge influx of curious mainstream fans, and would probably serve to shut the mouths of Jim Lampley, Barry McGuigan, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Frank Warren and many more who want to shout about the superiority of boxing over a sport that is stealing some of their thunder.

If Jones comes out of this match victorious, it wouldn’t bode well for the credibility of MMA. We could expect a constant barrage of “we told you so” by the boxing elitists, and would be held in the same regard as pro wrestling. 

Which leads me nicely into having a look at the guy in the other corner, Roy Jones Jr.? If he were to knock out Anderson Silva with relative ease, the reaction would be a generous “so what, he’s not even a boxer,” and maybe even certain people going as far as saying “put him in the cage with Anderson Silva and see how well he does there”. Winning does absolutely nothing for Roy Jones Jr.

Now, if the upset of all upsets were to occur, and Silva was to defeat Jones, the boxer would be lambasted by less tolerant members of the MMA community, the boxing community and the mainstream media. He’d be called washed up, and there would be calls to hang up the gloves and carry on his rap career. A loss to Anderson Silva wouldn’t tarnish his legacy but it would be constantly brought up as a talking point about how he lost to “that Ultimate Fighting guy”.

Anderson Silva is arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter in MMA. In the 1990’s Roy Jones Jr. was the pound-for-pound best in boxing, but Jones is now 39-years-old and is considered past his prime with three back-to-back losses, so putting MMA’s best against someone who is no longer boxing’s finest is definitely a risky move.