Ali-Frazier I

What if ,after winning the NFC championship, the then-reigning world champion Seattle Seahawks decided, “You know, that Tom Brady guy is pretty good, so instead of playing the Patriots we are going to play against the New York Jets in the Super Bowl.” The fans wouldn’t like it and the league wouldn’t allow it. That, however, is exactly how the sport of boxing works.

When I was growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, boxing was my favorite sport. Fights were on TV all the time and the heavyweight division was packed with talent. The first Rocky movie came out when I was 11 and after that my friends and I started putting on the gloves and pounding on each other in my basement. Fearing a lawsuit, my father told me I would have to go to a real gym if I wanted to box.

The “real” gym wasn’t so much a gym as the garage and basement of a tough old trainer named Eddie. When you opened up the garage door to get in, there was a 15-foot ring. Off to the sides there were heavy bags made from old canvas mailbags. There were double end bags which consisted of basketballs attached to the ceiling and the floor with inner tubes from bicycle tires. There were platforms and swivels for speed bags — but you had to bring your own speed bag. Eddie told me that, when buying a speed bag, “Get the smallest damn one you can find.” This turned out to be good advice because, once you get the hang of it, a larger bag really is too slow. This was certainly not a fancy place, but there were a few guys there that I would later see fighting on TV.

For the first month, no matter what bag I was working out on, I was only allowed to throw left jabs. It didn’t seem fun at the time, but to this day if get near a heavy bag I instinctually start to flick the jab and circle to my right.

I still remember the first time I got to get in the ring and do some real sparring. Because I was a big kid, I had to go up against guys two or three years older than me. That is not such a big deal — except with puberty those are like dog years. Still, I had quick hands, a nasty left hook, and was a natural counterpuncher. After that first sparring session, everyone, including my opponent, told me how dominant I was in the ring. For me, however, that was the most I had ever been hit in the face — and I didn’t like it. Even when the punches didn’t hurt, there was a feeling of, “Hey, not the face!”

After a year or so, I took a hiatus from boxing so I could play football. I fully intended to go back to the gym once football season ended but I never did. Somewhere along the line I guess I realized that I was better suited to getting my aggressions out on the football field while wearing a full face mask. Although I never became a boxer, this experience made me an even bigger fan of the sport.

In the 70’s, heavyweights were king. You had Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Norton, and lots of quality contenders. As those guys got older, Larry Holmes came along with his devastating jab — and it was several years before there was another interesting heavyweight fight. No matter. With guys like Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran, Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns, “Sugar” Ray Leonard, and my favorite, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler, the lighter weight classes provided more than enough excitement. Hagler, I remember, had been the world’s best middleweight long before he ever got a title shot. Which brings me back to the opening paragraph.

Boxing is corrupt. Where the NFL, MLB, and even the UFC have strong central governing bodies, boxing has several weak, corrupt sanctioning bodies. It is not uncommon for the champion of the WBA to not even be a ranked contender by the WBC, WBO, or IBF. In a way, boxing is more of a free market — but it is not the fans or the fighters who benefit from that. Promotors control most of what goes on. Thus, if a fighter has an exclusive contract with a promotor, the promotor has a financial interest in seeing that fighter hold onto his title as long as possible. And guess who hires the judges for the fights?

Championship fights bring in more money than non-title fights so, in addition to having multiple groups handing titles, they have added weight classes. All sorts of “junior” and “super” classes were created so that you now have a champ for almost every pound on the scale. At one point I could probably name the champs of each weight division. Now I can’t even name all of the weight divisions.While boxing was once my favorite sport, somewhere along the line I stopped trying to follow it — and I don’t think I’m alone. It is still the purest form of sport. Two men in a ring, no kicking, no biting (yeah, Tyson, I’m looking at you). Just a good clean fight. Violence, like it or not, is part of the human experience and the controlled violence we get from a sport like boxing lets us enjoy it while still feeling civil. I could definitely be sucked back in.

While boxing is not as much a part of the day-to-day sports scene as it once was, big fights still bring in big money. The Mayweather – Pacquiao fight could break pay-per-view records. While it is nice that they are getting this fight in before either boxer turns 40, it would have been an even bigger draw five or six years ago, when the fighters were still near their primes.

Another thing that got me thinking about boxing again is a commercial I saw the other day. While watching the decidedly non-violent sport of golf, NBC ran an add for some primetime fights on free TV. While TV advertising can’t support the big money fights (not when there is a chance of a 1st round KO), more exposure to the up-and-coming fighters is needed if the sport wants to find new fans. I’m interested, but I am already expecting to be disappointed.

So Ricochet, is there a good fix for boxing? One strong sanctioning body with lots of money could help, but what if they’re corrupt? Is boxing doing just fine as is? Should this old man stop yearning for the good old days? Or is it time for me to bite the bullet and start watching that silly cage stuff?