My wish list for 2003…
Ben Pierce
08.01 - It is a new year and time to look ahead at what the coming months will bring to the world of boxing. I think boxing had a great year in 2002. We saw some great fights, witnessed some of the best and the worst inside and outside of the ring and we also faced some of the same problems, made some of the same mistakes that have plagued the sport for many years now. I would like to talk about just a few of the things I'd like to see change and to see happen to improve our sport and make it even better in the coming years.
1. We need a National Boxing Commission for our sport. Boxing is the only sport without some type of national or international body to oversee it. We need to bring all the state commissions together, unify and establish a set of rules and have a body to enforce them. To upgrade the safety of the sport, to bring safeguards to the boxers, to set standards for officiating, to control the promoters and sanctioning bodies and to just generally clean up and bring parity to the sport of boxing.
2. To have unified, undisputed champions in boxing. I believe the sanctioning bodies need to come together, clean up their acts and set up a system where the champions of each body are required to fight each other and establish one undisputed champion for each division.
The National Boxing Commission can be instrumental in helping establish this. In fact their involvement may be essential.
The system can keep the different belts of all the different bodies and recognize them as different levels of accomplishment, but make the unified, undisputed championship the top level that all try to attain. The other title-holders others will be recognized as champions of just that particular organization and contenders to fight for the undisputed championship. The different belts of the different organizations will hold meaning, but only as a means to fight for the undisputed championship and in the ranking of boxers.
Let's not let anyone tell us who the real champion are, lets see that distinction earned inside the ring. It will take a great deal of planning and cooperation and someone to oversee the process, but it can be a functional reality.
3. Boxing needs a Retirement Fund and Pension Plan for all its participants. This can be done and set up by taking a very small percentage of each fight purse and placing it into a fund and have the money invested to increase in value. It would have a never-ending source of income from each and every fight, no matter how small or large the contribution and if invested properly could grow and more become established as time passes.
Do not ask me the requirements or qualifications that need to be met to be a part of this, let the other more intelligent minds involved in the sport determine this, but the sport should be able to provide for it's own in their time of need. I would also hope something of this type would include life and health insurance for boxers if they choose to participate in such a plan.
4. I want to see boxing back on network television. There are some things in the works now that may make this a reality, but it needs to be expanded even more. If we can bring credibility back to boxing, the ever-expanding networks that feature sports will want and need boxing as a part of their programming. We need the exposure of yesteryear to bring boxing back into the spotlight it once held. But let's be clear, we must clean up the sport, make it more organized and make boxing's champions more established and credible to appeal to the general public. We have gone the way of the WWF and WWE to a certain extent over the years and this needs to stop. There will always be the good and bad recognized in every sport, but this does not need to be glamorized. We need to return to our roots...to what made boxing successful in the past.
5. Boxing needs to schedule and promote more evenly matched fights and I mean on all levels of the sport. I know young boxers need a certain leeway to learn their craft and build a record and become more established…that is fine. But I want to see the top-level fighters meet each other in the ring and let the ring decide who is best.
I also want to see those just below the top-level, mid-level fighters and even the journeymen of the sport evenly matched against each other based upon skill level and offsetting attributes. This will make for better fights, more appealing to a larger audience and can even raise the level of compensation for the fighters who are not in the top echelon of their division.
If they are evenly matched it will make for great fights, that appeal to the public, increase attendance, bring better television ratings and thus make more money available to pay the boxers a higher wage for their craft, at all levels of the sport. Did not the two classic battles of Ward-Gatti prove this point better than anything I could write or say?
6. I want to see amateur boxing regain the lost luster it once enjoyed. I think implementing some of the above-mentioned items will help to establish this. I want to see Olympic boxing on television again. I want to see it have the same media coverage and attention it once garnered. I want to see the Golden Gloves championship featured on sports programming. When the public sees and reads and hears of these young boxers again their interest will be peaked and this will only bring more fans to the sport. The base and future of our sport is at this level and improvement here is essential.
These are just a few of many things that I think would help our sport grow and prosper and regain the status we once enjoyed. Some might think me a dreamer or that I live in a fantasy world, but I think each and every one of these goals are attainable. Maybe not in one year, but the implementation and beginnings of each could start in the next year.
For these improvements in our sport to happen the fans of boxing must become more involved and we must let our voices be heard. Not on a message board or forum…but by writing to your congressman or representative, by sending emails to the sanctioning bodies! Lets start a campaign to let the television networks know we will support boxing programming. Lets fill their email, send them letters, and ring their phones. We have to make our voices heard, loud and clear and by every avenue available.
It is apparent and clear that those in power in boxing will not implement these changes or they will do so at a snails pace. They have always had an excuse, a cute quip, and a reason why it will not work now, needs more study or this is not the right way to do it. That is because they are in power, they are the ones making the money and they do not care if it drives the sport into the ground, they will squeeze every penny out of it on the way down. Have they not already been doing this for years? We must get past the excuses, past our personal differences of implementation and methods and make these changes become a reality.
It is time we stood up for the sport of boxing and made our voices heard and make the case for change…change for the better. If not, I am afraid boxing, as we know it now will not exist much longer. People associated with this sport in decades past can attest to that fact. We must stop the slow process of deterioration within our sport and work towards positive change
What will you do? Together…. united we could accomplish much.
Questions/Comments: benp1000@msn.com
