No Holds Barred: Larry Hazzard on the Continuing Evolution of MMA and Boxing

Thursday, 05 November 2009

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman speaks with
Larry Hazzard Sr. about the development of the combat sports of mixed
martial arts and boxing.

Serving for over two decades as commissioner of the New Jersey State
Athletic Control Board, Larry Hazzard played a key role in the
establishment of unified rules for both boxing and mixed martial arts.
He is now a senior official at the IBF (International Boxing
Federation) (http://www.ibf-usba-boxing.com/), with the title Personal
Assistant to the President and Chairman of Officials Education,
Development and Supervision. He also is the founder of C.O.M.B.A.T.T.
- Community Organization Making Boxing Alternatives Today for Tomorrow
(http://combatt.net/), in Newark, New Jersey, which provides both
boxing and fitness training along with educational and recreational
activities for at-risk and inner-city youths.

With such a long history of accomplishments and being a pioneer in so
many aspects of the combat sports, our discussion blended history with
current analysis about boxing and mixed martial arts together.

Among the many topics in this lengthy discussion, we spoke about the
key role he played in developing the unified rules for mixed martial
arts in 2000 and 2001, and convincing the Nevada commission to
sanction the sport in 2001. We discussed his role at C.O.M.B.A.T.T.
and the importance of training in the combat sports for youth. We
analyzed many of the problems in boxing which have led to its
diminution into a niche sport. We talked about the issue of fighter
safety in both sports, as well as his innovation in bringing instant
replay to the combat sports.

After numerous other topics, our discussion ended with a breaking news
story. The major boxing sanctioning organizations are seriously
preparing for a summit to address jointly the problems in boxing and
see if they can finally work together to start to solve them. The plan
is now for this summit to be held in January 2010, and probably in
Mexico, where the WBC is headquartered. As a top official in the IBF,
Larry Hazzard stated that the IBF gives their full support to this
effort, and that boxing "has to be fixed by us." We will definitely
closely follow these important developments.

This is the kind of discussion which any real aficionado of the combat
sports will really love, where we approach the issues in the combat
sports of boxing and mixed martial arts together. They are much more
interrelated than many people realize, and the contributions of Larry
Hazzard to both sports are but one more example of that. It thus was
one of the most enlightening discussions ever on No Holds Barred.

You can play or download No Holds Barred at
http://nhbnews.podOmatic.com/entry/2009-10-28T16_12_35-07_00.

You can also download No Holds Barred at
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Make sure to visit the official boxing forum for No Holds Barred, the
MySpace Boxing Forum, at http://groups.myspace.com/boxing.

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Thanks, Eddie Goldman
http://eddiegoldman.com