It's a list of examples where boxers defeated athletes from other fighting sports.
Since this list highlights fights where boxers won, I would like you to add also fights to the list where boxers lost.
Could turn out to be an interesting little boxrec-encyclopedia of these kind of matchups.
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---------------------------In 1911 Jack Johnson defeated catch wrestling champions Frank Gotch, George Hackenschmidt and Ad Santel all on the same night, and was reported to have been stinking drunk while doing it.
Jack Dempsey knocked out wrestler Ed “Strangler” Lewis in a mixed match between Boxing and Wrestling champions held at Chicago’s Comiskey park in 1924, breaking the grappling legend’s jaw in four places as he rained down punch after punch on the helpless matman.
Sugar Ray Robinson knocked out the infamous Judo Gene LeBelle during a disagreement on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in 1959.
Carlos Monzon, another middleweight knocked wrestling champion Bruno Sammartino out cold in a streetfight, breaking his jaw and putting him in the hospital for three weeks.
Featherweight boxer Ruben Navarro KO’d Martial Arts legend Bruce Lee in .55 seconds back in 1969 on a Hong Kong movie set, causing the “Little Dragon” to postpone film shooting for three weeks.
That fight, which is on film and was posted on YouTube, was completely one sided despite Lee outweighing the Boxer by 15 pounds.
Speaking of Kickboxer Joe Lewis, let’s not forget that he was knocked flat out cold by Boxer Eddie Neilson, and also again by Boxer Lou Phillips even quicker in 1972.
Everyone remembers Thomas Hearns’ exhibition knockouts of Chuck Norris and Bill “Superfoot” Wallace in 1988.
Boxer Butterbean Esch KO’d MMA pioneer and world class wrestler Dan Severn with a shot to the mouth, suffering only cuts to his right hand from Severn’s protruding teeth.
K-1 great Andy Hug lost a mixed match to long retired boxer Duane Bobick only days after Bobick suffered the amputation of two fingers from an industrial accident.
Hug had to be carried out on a stretcher, and his game was forever affected by the KO.
Another K-1 star, Branko Cikatic was beaten senseless by retired Boxing champion Leon Spinks in Las Vegas in 1994 after walking across a hotel floor which Spinks has just finished mopping.
Cikatic required 34 stitches to close the facial wounds he’d suffered in the beating.
In 1997, Kickboxing champion Johnny Catherine, called by many the greatest Kickboxer in history, insulted former Heavyweight title challenger Jean Pierre Coopman while vacationing in Île de la Réunion. Coopman became enraged when Catherine kicked at him and beat the kickboxer unconscious with his boxing skills. Then, as the Kickboxing king lay motionless on the ground, Coopman fetched a small sword from his hotel room and cut off Catherine’s leg below the knee and carried it away like a trophy, muttering Belgium obscenities about how only woman kick in fights.
Catherine bled out from the wound and died at the scene, yet Coopman was pardoned by the French government for his role in Belgium history.
Another K-1 legend, and the man who along with Peter Aerts is regarded as the best K-1 heavyweight ever, Ernesto Hoost was crushed twice by a boxing football player named Robert Sapp in two seperate fights actually held under Hoost’s own house rules.
In both fights, the totally untrained Sapp, who’s background in fighting consisted of a four week course in Boxing, was able to brutally KO his opponent, making this one the hardest to believe among all the matches I’ve listed, without a doubt.
I want to add one fight from UFC 1:
Art Jimmerson (pro boxer, fighting with one boxing glove) vs. Royce Gracie (the legend of MMA).
In this fight Gracie swept Jimmerson's leg, mounted him, softened him up with a couple of rabbit punches to set up a submission.
Then Jimmerson tapped out, without any punishment taken. He just wanted no part of Royce's groundgame.
