DUMB AND DUMBER: BOXING PROMOTERS AND WHY WE MAY LOOSE THE SPORT

October 11^th is a big date on the boxing calendar.  It marks the first steps of Kelly Pavlik towards challenging Calzaghe by taking on the vanquished champion Bernard Hopkins.  It also marks the beginning of the cleanup of the heavyweight division as Vitali Klitschko returns against Samuel Peter.  Finally, October 11^th is a reminder at how dumb boxing promoters are and provides good evidence that even while boxing is experiencing a resurgence of talent and good fights, our beloved sport is still in trouble.

Problem 1:  These two fights are on the same night.  While being cynically viewed as a young guy takes on old man for money fight, Pavlik vs. Hopkins will be a good fight because of the fighters’ contrasting skill sets.  Meanwhile, after a year of setbacks, injuries, and just plain being stupid, Vitali Klitschko will finally challenge Samuel Peter for the number two contender slot at Heavyweight. 

A quick clarification is in order.  I neither respect nor follow any rankings other than Ring magazine’s.  According to Boxing’s premier publication, the Heavyweight championship is vacant.  The number one contender is Vladimir Klitschko, the number two contender is Samuel Peter.  Also, this ridiculous Vitali Klitschko vs. Samuel Peter fight would not happen if it were not for those idiotic sanctioning bodies.  Because Vitali “earned” the rating of “Champion Emeritus” at the WBC he gets first crack at their strap whenever he wants it.  Thus, all these years later, the old man who go his eye punched out by Lennox Lewis has decided to come back.  But there is a little problem. 

Actually, it’s a rather big problem.  One that stands 6’2” and weighs 250 pounds.  “The Nigerian Nightmare” most certainly is that and I predict that he will punch Vitali stupid. 

But that is neither here nor there.  The problem is that two important, attractive fights are being put on on the same night and time.  One may surmise that since HBO and Showtime are traditionally rivals this should be no big surprise.  This is a fair assessment, but it speaks to a lack of vision beyond the marginal confines of Boxing.  Boxing is not dead, but let’s face it, we need some help.  At no other time is history has an Ali, or a Louis, or a Dempsey been needed to drag boxing out it’s doldrums and make it one of America’s premier sports.  It’s not that there’s a lack of talent.  Despite there being 17 weight divisions, boxing has enough contenders to provide awesome fights and rivalries (case in point:  Vazquez vs. Marquez I, II, and III).  However there are a few rivals in Boxing’s market today and they are more than just knocking on the door. 

MMA is a new, fresh sport that is appealing to a younger generation that is both willing to pay money to see it and more than happy to pay attention to it.  MMA also has a flagship league that has none of the problems boxing does.  UFC is aggressively and intelligently marketed, well organized, and already respected as a sport.  Let’s forget for a second that Boxing is more difficult, has athletes of higher caliber, and has been established as a “man’s” sport since 1882, because my generation doesn’t know that.  Boxing isn’t dead and UFC is not quite as big, but things are getting close.

This of course begs the question:  What the hell are HBO and Showtime doing putting on big shows opposite each other?  Both of these fights have all the ingredients to not only be good shows, but also appeal to new fans.  Kelly Pavlik is an all-american boy from Youngstown Ohio.  He also has a right hand that resembles a sixteen inch artillery shell.  Samuel Peter may not be American, he has immigrated here from Nigeria, but as far as exciting heavyweights go he’s about as good as it gets in this day and age.  Really, who could resist a clubbing mauler in the tradition of George Foreman?  While his nationality leaves something to be desired, his knockout power doesn’t.  Both fights are big, both fights are important, both fights can draw new fans into the sport. 

Boxing promoters, the people who really run the sport, are too stupid to see this.  Just as they are foolish in their dismissal of UFC and the threat that that sport presents to our fan base.  Only boxing promoters would worry about fighting each other for table scraps while the foxes are sizing up the chicken coop.  What makes matters worse is that the Pavlik vs. Hopkins bout is a Pay-Per-View.  This means that not only do I have to figure out which fight to watch, I have to figure out if I want to pay extra to see one of them.  This problem is only complicated by the fact that HBO and Showtime are TV networks.  Their bottom line is dollars and whatever programming brings it in the best will be their preference.  Showtime has already begun to broadcast an MMA program called EliteXC, many nights as a complement to their Boxing programming.  Anyone who can’t read the writing on the wall must be more illiterate than Sonny Liston. 

So who will direct our sport in this critical time, and, God willing, in the future?  Unfortunately the answer is Boxing Promoters.  Now before I get ahead of myself, I must admit, there are responsible boxing promoters who have kept the best interests of the sport in mind alongside their wallets.  Tex Rickard was probably the best promoter of all time and he knew that if he screwed up the sport, future paydays would be diminished or nonexistent.  Oscar DeLahoya’s Golden Boy promotions knows how to put on a show and appeal to new fans.  The problem is that for every Rickard or Golden Boy, there are ten or twenty Jim Norris’s or Frankie Carbos.  None more so than Don King.  The man who robbed Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield blind as well as contributed greatly to Ali’s deterioration by with-holding medical reports that would have prevented his fights against Holmes and Berbick.  No single person has caused more harm to the sport of Boxing than Don King, and everyone knows it.  Yet, he’s allowed to continue operating and so are dozens of other horrible promoters whose only desire is money.  There are a lot of promoters who don’t give a good God-damn about the health of their fighters or the viability of the sport.  All they care about is how much money they can make today, forgetting or not caring how much could be made tomorrow.

This exemplifies my final point.  The short sightedness of Boxing promoters and the people in charge of managing the sport.  Dana White, the man behind UFC, doesn’t talk about this week or next week, he talks about next year, or three years from now.  Meanwhile, boxing commissions and sanctioning bodies are worried about overturning decisions from last  week and trying to figure out excuses to shorten bouts and increase glove sizes (both of which are detrimental to the sport).  They have no foresight and worse yet don’t care one iota for the fighters who provide their living.  Boxers have been traditionally viewed as pugs and it is a mainstream belief that boxers are robbed blind and left for dead.  This of course is true to some degree in some cases, otherwise that view would not exist.  Boxing isn’t a big enough sport for legislative bodies to take a hand in necessary reform , besides who wants congress taking a crack at fixing the sweet science?  After all these are the masterminds behind Iraq and the recession.  If we handed them the reigns and asked for reform legislation, Lord knows what we’d end up with. 

So how do we turn the sport around?  As any effective reform movement tells us, you have to start at the top.  Today there are four major sanctioning bodies, each recognizing seventeen weight divisions (many less than five pounds apart).  This means that at the top of Boxing there could be as many as sixty-eight champions.  During the golden age of our sport, there were eight, and everybody knew them.  Today the average American couldn’t even name one of the three heavyweight champions.  What we need to do, and what I do, is recognize only the Ring champion and the Ring ratings.  Ok, so the Ring also has seventeen divisions, but if the alphabets disappeared I have a suspicion that Nigel Colins would be more than happy to revert to the original eight with the addition of cruiser-weight as it is the only new division that is really necessary (look up George Foreman vs. Joe Frazier on youtube if you’re not convinced). 

Also, Ring magazine was founded by the most respected man in Boxing history, Nat Fliescher.  No man before or since, is or was as great an authority on the sport than Nat.  He saw every heavyweight champion from Corbett to Frazier and was the only one not to strip Ali of his title during the draft case.  It would make sense that his chosen successor, Nigel Colins, could function in the same capacity, with the same amount of responsibility, authority, and respect as the late Mr. Fliescher could.  Finally, Ring magazine doesn’t charge sanctioning fees and if a fight does not turn out exactly as they wanted, they do not have the authority to overturn, change, or in any other capacity alter the outcome, the way that alphabets so routinely do. 

State commissions must also stop buying into false logic and poorly thought out conclusions.  The first of which being that injuries and fatalities can be removed from the sport.  Boxing fatalities are shocking because all the idiots in charge think that they removed the possibility of ring-deaths with the last foolish and harmful legislation that they passed.  In order to better care for our fighters, we must be honest with ourselves:  boxing is brutal and dangerous and no matter what legislation or rules are passed, there will always be the possibility that fighters will die in the ring.  If we accept this hypothesis, as well we should, we can then begin forming rules that effectively protect fighters not dull the sport.  Helmets?  It has been proven that when it comes to the brain, padding is no protection.  Heavier gloves?  Gloves were designed to protect a fighter’s hand not his head.  It has also been proven that repeated blows of lesser intensity are more likely to cause injury and lead to puglistica dimensia.  What allows for the accumulation of punches better than bigger gloves?  More padding means less force on the blow, which means less knockouts and more sustained damage.  Shorter fights?  The tragic injury that killed Duk Koo Kim in his fight against Ray Mancini could have happened in any round.  Also, NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE HAS BEEN PRODUCED TO SHOW THAT A TWELVE ROUND FIGHT IS ANY SAFER THAN A FIFTEEN ROUND FIGHT.  I put special emphasis on that sentence because the twelve-round era suspiciously coincides with the quickest decline of boxing.  Hagler-Leonard, DeLahoya-Trinidad, Chavez-Taylor, and host of other fights demonstrate that twelve rounds are not enough to decide a clear winner when world championships are on the line.  Boxing commissions and promoters need to recognize these facts and change their practices accordingly.

It is sad that in a time when mainstream culture demonfies American manhood, and we are robbed of our sense of self and confidence by Abercrombie and Fitch, MTV, and Fantasy sport leagues, boxing is not so easily turned to.  Also, it is sad that when we as a culture need it most, no national Hero, a Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, or John L. Sulivan, is available to step forward.  The symptoms of this disease are evidenced by a niche fan base having to choose which fight to watch because they’re on at the same time.  Choosing which fight, of course, is the least of our problems.  If we the fan base don’t begin to demand serious change in America’s greatest sport, and soon, in ten years, we may see our niche become even smaller or vanish all together.