8 Reasons the UFC Will Always Be Better Than Boxing

Boxing has issues, lots of them, and the UFC is going to the forefront as the premier combat sport.

There are multiple reasons why the UFC is better and will always hold the advantage over boxing.

Boxing's main issues are that as a sport, there's just too much bureaucracy in the sport, and it needs a complete restructure to even be close to what the UFC is.

While boxing has tremendous knockouts, it doesn't have the one thing that truly makes fighting someone beautiful—submissions. By having submissions as part of the sport, the UFC allows champions multiple ways to secure a victory and even injure opponents.

There are multiple times in the UFC's history that a submission has gone too far, and a fighter has either broken a limb or gone unconscious from a choke. Boxing is a much more pure sport, but it's lack of avenues to win doesn't make it as interesting or fun to watch as the UFC.

Boxing is fought on a square canvas with four poles at the corner and ropes holding the competitors in. While this is a traditional and even long time accepted arena for contact sports that has been used even in MMA, it still does not compare to the eight-sided cages used in the UFC.

In a sport that has been traced to it's combat and underground arena roots, the steel cage sides only enhance the draw to the gruesome sport.

Boxing has 17 different recognized weight divisions. The split between each division is only five to seven pounds until you get to the cruiserweight and heavyweight splits. That's way too many belts and segregation of fighters by weight.

However, MMA has a total of  eight divisions separated by at least 10 and up to 60 pounds. By having just eight divisions, there's much more parity and a more interesting product. 

People don't care about who's the 140-pound champion or the 130-pound champion in boxing, yet they will care about the 135- or the 147-pound champions. The completely illogical setup for boxing makes it too easy for the most talented boxers to collect belts and look more like Shawn Michaels when he was the European, Intercontinental, WWE and tag team champion all at once. 

Boxing has too many legitimate top-level sanctioning bodies. They have the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC), World Boxing Organization (WBO) and International Boxing Federation (IBF).

All four promotions have their title for each of the 17 divisions. That makes a total of 68 possible men who can claim to be the "best boxer in the world" at a given time, and that's unacceptable. 

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the only legitimate top-level sanctioning body for mixed martial arts. With just one authority and just eight divisions to award titles to, the UFC has a total of eight men who can claim to be the best in the world at a given time.

Considering how far apart the splits are in the divisions, that's acceptable and even encouraged as there are more than 30 fighters at any given time who are good enough to be champions but just eight have belts.

Boxing has matches for 12, three-minute rounds. UFC has a maximum of five, five-minute rounds. However, despite the lesser amount of time, UFC combines wrestling, boxing, kickboxing and multiple other martial arts into one of the most heavily taxing sports out there. All the while, the likelihood of getting knocked out, having to submit and thinking about every single angle the opponent can come in and dominate the fight is taxing on the brain.

After one five-minute round, both fighters will be extremely physically and mentally drained and barring knockout or submission, will only have at least two more rounds to get through until they can say the fight is over.

The overall drain in MMA is much higher, but at the same time, the fans also don't get bored as quickly. Watching a 12-round fight is great, but it's much more entertaining to see two guys kill each other in five.

Sure the MMA has punching and footwork, but the big difference is that part of that footwork includes knees and feet smacking the other guy in the body and face.

There's also the benefit of submissions, takedowns, wrestling on the mat and fights that have the unlikely, but still possible, finish of someone looking like they're in a weaker position and sinking in a choke or knocking the other person out from their back.

In boxing, it's either dominate the fight or knock the other guy out. There's no such thing as submissions, and all boxing turns into is guys dancing around the ring looking for the best way to punch each other out.

This leads to boring matches and a bunch of people wondering what exactly is going on. The lack of anything but punching and dancing leads to a goofy scoring system that isn't easy to understand by casual fight fans and leads into the next point...

As seen in Pacquiao-Bradley, boxing doesn't have a fair scoring system that's easily and readily understood.

However, in the UFC, there's always going to be a result that people agree with. Whether it's by one of the various instant-stoppage reasons or it goes to the judges, fans are never left scratching their heads the way the Pacquiao-Bradley fight left fans doing so.

Even in close split decisions by the three judges cage-side, the crowd will always feel that it was at least a close fight especially when they disagree with who won. The Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans fight recently was very similar to the Pacquaio vs. Bradley boxing match.

Jones played the role of Pacquiao, only the UFC's judging system leaves no question that the winner was Jones, and the refs scored it as an obvious Jones win: 49-46, 49-46 and 50-45, all for Jones to retain his title.

There isn't any ducking or dodging. If a champion doesn't want to fight the No. 1 contender, he is instantly stripped of the title. No one accepts what has gone on between Pacquiao and Mayweather as any sort of fairness to the fans of Boxing.

Both men come off as if they wanted nothing to do with the other, and it shows a complete lack of professionalism in the sport.

In the UFC, there's one matchmaker in Joe Silva—one promoter in Dana White. There's always the guarantee that the best are going against the best every single night out. Even if it's not the absolute best in the sport like on the UFC 146 undercard, the matches were always very evenly matched. 

An example would be the No. 4 going against the No. 5 in Velasquez vs. Silva and other matches having the tiered feel to them. Until boxing has one organization come in, regulate everything and force the best matches between boxers, it will never hold a candle to the UFC.