Otherwise, the boxer just shuffled up totally guarded and knocked the martial artist out with a series of combinations which the martial artist had no defense against.
Must have been poor martial artists.
I was a pretty good operator in Taekwondo. I earned my last rating during a full contact competition in Bangkok in 1973. I caught all hell over that one. US Service Men were not allowed to compete in that venue but we did anyway. The Minimum Rating to compete was Brown so it was some pretty tough competition. I did very well but was finally defeated by a Thai Boxer. The next year, they outlaws the Thai Boxers from the Competition. It seems the mixture of US Boxing and French Savat was devastating and the normal Marital Artists weren't prepared for it. Regular Marital Artist were normal knocked out early on. I lasted a bit longer because my House Boy was a retired Thai National Boxer who helped to prepare me for it.
I got out of any of that for a couple of years but started to put on weight. There wasn't any decent dojos in the area I was in but there was one hell of a Base Boxing program ran by two ex pro fighters, a middleweight and a Heavyweight. I thought I should weigh 150 lbs like the weight charts said. I dropped weight under the program, got down to a light middles weight after 6 months. Had all the moves. I lost my first and only 4 fights as a light weight. I lost too much weight. I was the same height as the other lights but I was about 4 inches wider and thicker. I lost some of my power which lost some of my speed. I put the pounds back on to middle weight and won the next 19 fights with 16 knockouts. What you may not know, when you first start out, you are a chump and they put you against other chumps. By fight 15, I was pitted against the cream of the crop. No longer was I coming out just out of breath and sore. I was getting hurt. By round 3, it's very similar to hitting each other with 2 by 4s because your padding in the gloves are sweat filled. Those 10lb gloves are over 20 lbs at that point and hard as cement. Gloves are not there to protect the other person. They are there to keep you from breaking your hands and wrists at that point. Due to a split decision in fight 21, I put a young golden gloves kid into the hospital. I meant to hurt him in fight 21. I never saw anyone taken out of the ring on a stretcher before like that. I started to hit less, not nearly as hard. And I started to get hurt more and more. After fight 27, which I won, my trainer came to me and said two words no fighter ever wants to hear. "it's time". My record as a Middle Weight was 26-0-1. If you don't think an Interservice Boxer isn't good, he compares with a Boston Club Fighter which can be a Pros worst nightmare on a given night. I took another year off mostly to heal and get my head back.
I resurfaced in PKA. Boxers did extremely well in that sport. But it's a sport like most Martial arts. It's highly regulated and heavily refereed. But they handicapped the boxers by having an eight effective kick rule per round. Meaning, if the Boxer walked out and just knocked the other person out before the 8 kicks then he was disqualified. So you got the 8 kicks out of the way as fast as you could. But, the funny thing is, the Martial Artist just wouldn't cooperate all the time, drat it all. He was better with his kicks and leg blocks so the first round was his fight and if he could knock you out he wasn't disqualified because his 8 kicks came faster. It did even things out.
Case in point, The worlds best Mixed Martial Artist against a Retired Middle Weight Boxer. This isn't that far in the past. Merriwether could have ended that fight in the first round but chose to carry it on to make it look better. Brought in more money that way. And it just might make a few more bucks in a rematch. Merriweather ended it exactly when he chose to. The Boxer has one punch that no Martial Artist masters and that is a short 6 inch punch that brings it home right on the button whether it's on the chin or on the sternum. It's setup with a series of combination. A Boxer of good quality will try and break that combination but a Martial Artist doesn't have the training for it. I can handle a Martial Artist every time but the only way to handle a boxer is to shoot him.