Boxing's Black Eye

Originally Posted 09/22/03--4:51pm CDT

When I was younger, I could not understand why people watched boxing or what made them think it was a sport. I was into baseball, football, and basketball. I did not see the attraction of boxing and I dare say that I thought it was a big waste of time. As I have grown older, I have come to appreciate the "sweet science." Now, I would describe myself as a fairly astute boxing fan. In addition, I have to come to care a great deal for the condition of the sport and its future. I find it hard not to care about an endeavor that can produce such classic drama as the Mickey Ward/Arturo Gatti fight from 2001 and 2002. However, I find myself saddened by what I consider to be the deteriorating condition of boxing. I'll outline what I mean by this with a few examples. Mike Tyson was once a great fighter and great champion. During his rise to prominence and eventual mastery of the heavyweight division, he was mentored and parented by the legendary Cus D'Amato. For those not familiar with Cus, think of Mick from the Rocky movies. After D'Amato's death, Tyson's life in and out of boxing began to spiral downward. The bottom of that spiral was his knockout loss to James "Buster" Douglas in Tokyo and his conviction for rape and subsequent incarceration. Although this story is tragic enough at this point, the bigger problem for me came after his release and his return to the ring. There was, of course, the infamous ear-biting of Evander Holyfield. That event definitely signalled to most reasonable people that Mike had some issues that needed to be dealt with, perhaps even with medication. Despite this realization, Tennessee was still willing to license Tyson to fight Lennox Lewis even after the Nevada commission found Tyson unfit to fight. Had Tennessee not licensed Tyson, I'm quite sure another state would have eventually, considering the price was right. At the time, there was an outcry for a national boxing commission to prevent this sort of license-by-whim approach to the sport. This idea was floated not only for the protection of the sport, but also for the protection of the boxers who actually have lives outside of the ring. Being productive in those outside lives is, many times, in direct opposition with being productive inside the ring. However, the only measure of a boxer in the current system is his value to the sport inside the ring. This often puts boxers in very disturbing positions. For example, Meldrick Taylor, a once proud contender, contnues to fight even though he is far beyond his prime and is sustaining damage that even to the casual observer is severe and irreversible. This weekend, I watched the replay of the Mosley/De La Hoya fight. Going into the fight, I already knew that Mosley had won 115-113 on all three judge's scorecards. I also knew that De La Hoya was considering challenging the decision. Now, I am by no means a De La Hoya fan. In fact, I smirked quite contentedly when he lost a decision to Felix "Tito" Trinidad in a fight that he was winning until he began running late in the fight. I thought it was his just reward to lose for not fighting aggressively despite his lead on the scorecards. So, I sat down with my notepad and watched the fight with the sound turned down, as I had also heard that HBO's commentator's had been very pro-De La Hoya during the fight. I also told myself before the fight began that I would give Mosley the benefit of the doubt on close rounds. I scored the bout twice simultaneously, once allowing myself to score even rounds and once forcing myself to give every round to one boxer or the other. After twelve rounds, my scorecards read 117-111 De La Hoya and 115-113 De La Hoya respectively. Now, it has been pointed out by some who have much more boxing experience than I do (Max Kellerman among those and the one I respect the most.), that scoring a fight on television and scoring it in person are two different animals. Television allows the viewer to see punches more clearly and tends to lend itself to judging accuracy better. Scoring in person tends to be weighted towards the harder puncher. However, this fight, coupled with the Oquendo/Byrd debacle from last weekend is leaving a very bad taste in my mouth. Something seems amiss to me here, and once again I believe we must revist the idea of a national boxing commission. A national boxing commission would hopefully end the problems with boxing that I consider the most damaging. First, it would finally create a single champion per weight class rather than myriad of alphabet soup governing body titles that exist today. Second, it would codify a set of rules for licensing boxers that could not be circumvented and that provided for what was best in the interest of the sport as well as the interest of the boxer. Third, it could recruit and TRAIN judges according to set of rules to help make judging a more reliable and consistent (I think of this in terms of referee or umpire training camps for the NFL, MLB, and NBA.). Finally, a national boxing commission would lend legitimacy to a sport that is inching its way towards being more like the WWE than the "sweet science" it once was. If we don not act soon and swiftly, we may be watching the likes of Butterbean and George "The Animal" Steele fighting for meaningless title belts rather than watching fights for the ages like Ward/Gatti. In the end, the future of legitimate boxing lies with the success or failure of initiatives to create a national boxing commission to restore boxing to some semblance of its former self.