Tonight from Germany we've got what would normally be a much anticipated fight going on. It's the heavyweight championship pitting current champ Wladimir Klitschko against American challenger Tony Thompson.

Great right? Uh, yeah, I guess. By the way, how many of you even knew this fight was going on this evening. Come on, be honest.

In my research for this fight, this is the most hilarious quote I found about it:

Thompson is poorly conditioned, mechanical, and couldn't knock out a cruiserweight.

Man, feel the excitement!

Wladimir Klitschko is also not regarded as being the most exciting fighter either, so we could be in for a bit of snoozer that should be easily won by Klitschko, since he's by far the superior fighter. In fact, he's heads and shoulders above everyone else in the heavyweight division right now anyway, which is sort of bad news for boxing.

The troubling thing about all of this is that I actually remember when heavyweight fights were huge news. They were something you looked forward to. Fights like Tyson/Holyfield were must see TV, even though you had to pay $50 for pay-per-view to watch them.

These days, you'd have to pay me $50 to watch a fight.

So what's happened? I personally think it's a combination of things. One is that the great personalties, such as Tyson, are no longer in boxing. Two, there have been no real heavyweight rivalries since Tyson vs Holyfield. And three, MMA has absolutely crippled boxing's appeal, if not nearly killed it.

I think the last point of those three is the most crucial though. Almost every sport has time periods where there aren't necessarily great personalties in the game and there aren't great rivalries, but the game survives primarily because it has no other competition.

But boxing does have competition now with MMA, and it's losing...badly.

For me, I now get excited for UFC fights the way I used to get excited for heavyweight boxing fights. And so do many other people.

To me, what makes MMA so much better than boxing is that it's much more exotic. You have fighters with tremendously different styles going against each other, whereas boxing is simply punching.

The other advantage of MMA is that the fights are designed to get the guys going after each other. Most fights are either 3 or 5 rounds, so you can't exactly spend your time avoiding your opponent. And that appeals to people. After all, you watch fights to see punches get thrown and to see guys get knocked out. You don't watch fights to see guys dance around.

Some people are hoping Klitschko can dominate this fight to add some spice back to heavyweight boxing, but even if he does, will you care?

The answer is probably not.