Been a long time, gentlemen.

[Romulus]

How we doin'?

[the ollie reed fan club]

The world is going to hell in a hand basket but other than that pretty good!

[lloyd mayflower]

Glad to see you back Rom. How are you keeping?

[salvador]

Hey Rom, we've missed your company!

This board might be dying - so copy the link below if you didn't see it on the other thread, as the site below is waiting for us if this place ($89 a month) actually goes away.

On a side note, if you're still training fighters, I'd be curious to know if you've personally seen a shift recently from guys who would normally have been boxers becoming MMA guys from the beginning instead. I would assume that's the case.

https://boxingunfiltered.boards.net/

[Romulus]

Good to be back around for sure. Been a rather eventful couple of years.

I'm back to doing a little training with some people. Not anywhere near the scale to which it once was. Just don't have that kind of time. Running companies = not easy. Who knew?

Won another amateur/semi-pro championship earlier this year. Would have had two champs in the same event but my fighter tore his bicep in the semi-finals... an injury sustained with an absolute bomb that he landed and knocked his opponent down. But he's healed, he's pissed off, and has every intention of winning the 2024 event just to get the title he should have had a few months ago.

The guy that won the championship has a pretty cool story. I'll have to write it up and post the video of the championship fight here later on if you-all would like. Really proud of both of them, and they'll have some things to do in USA Boxing this year, too.

I think what's happening throughout the combat sports world is hard to track at the moment. There's interest, but there's no pattern to it. My gym setup here is a pretty good microcosm of that. We have boxing and BJJ. Our BJJ instructor is excellent. Black belt. Much more successful as an MMA fighter than in boxing, but extremely accomplished in pure BJJ competitions. In MMA, he was the last fight for Wes Sims, the former UFC heavyweight standout, and sent him into retirement for good, spoiling a comeback bid and a behind-the-scenes documentary special for UFC.tv for Sims in the process. There are a couple of Jiu-Jitsu exclusives in our gym, and a couple of boxing exclusives, most of the rest do both, and I encourage that for a variety of reasons. But the competition rarely goes into MMA; it's either boxing or BJJ competitions. Can I explain that? No.

The real two-edged sword here is boxing taking a complete sideshow turn in the last couple of years. You have people who do it the right way and try to rise through the ranks, getting paid very little or doing paid bouts, hoping for a shot on a big stage to pull a big upset for a bigger payday... only to watch some jackass YouTuber get paid six or seven figures to "box" for a few rounds, just because they have this influencer tag. It makes people watch boxing, and it makes some of those people say, "If they can do it, I should try to actually learn to do it and see what happens."

The bad side is when reality sets in, it makes the sport and everyone in it look bad, and it makes people who want to push through and make something happen give up on it because time and energy and resources are wasted on idiots like the Paul brothers and the other celebrities and former athletes from other sports who want to do it for big, quick payoff. There seems to be a group of those who are opting for MMA from the outset, but I'm also seeing a decent amount of people who make the jump too quickly into MMA and find themselves looking for opportunities in boxing.

Let's face it. Boxing can be daunting for some. MMA tells them they can be good at multiple things. Boxing says you better be really good at one. Not everyone has the confidence to go an attempt it under those terms. And there are other factors. There's a regional component to it, depending on where you may be and what's accessible to you.

All that said... considering how Charmin soft our society has become, I'm just glad to see anyone decide to have the balls to stand and fight. It's getting progressively more rare.

[Romulus]

Got a new gig doing expert commentary. Hasn't officially started but it came about because I sat in on a whim, with no prep, and did a couple of the fights and they want me to do it from now on.

One of the fights was a KO1. Posted the video in the BU and Associated Media thread.

I might have called my shot on the end of the fight a few seconds before it happened.....

[Method]

What up, Rom!?