By Chris Kelly: Our sport is on its last legs. Its obvious that although trailing on points mixed martial arts in general and the UFC in particular, are live in this fight.
The most painful thing is that boxings powers that be have done it to themselves. The promoters and the alphabet organizations have let us down and it’s now up to the networks – HBO and Showtime – to save the day (the future I see doesn’t have Maidana v Morales as PPV by the way).
At its essence boxing is a simple sport and in order for it to thrive we must do away with the complex meddle of titles and promoter controlled match ups.
The current alphabet titles have become irrelevant and it’s time they were treat them as such. WBC/BO/BA and IBF plus the Ring. And let’s not forget interim, emeritus, super and diamond. It’s a joke that embarrasses me anytime I’m asked by a non fan who the world champion is. We have reached the stage where having a championship title has lost all merit. With as many as 6 or 7 champions for any one weight class it’s a moot point as to who is the best and we could have the same arguments if there were no belts at all.
HBO and Showtime have already increased their muscle flexing by demanding certain match ups but they need to press on to the point where they control match making altogether. Let’s face it the networks want ratings and PPV buys and the best way for them to get both is to cater to public demand. To give us the fights we want, not the fights Top Rank, Goldenboy etc want (irrelevant snooze fests so some prospect can be wet nursed to a risk free title shot.)
But it’s not as simple as that.
The networks have obviously identified boxing as a limited market and as such have a finite number of dates. Televising more than this identified number of fights would flood the market and cease to be profitable for them. This is causing some of the best but lower profile fighters to have long periods of inactivity.
This is where as fans we can play our part in reinvigorating the sport:
We have to recruit like we’re scientologists. It’s not enough we watch the fights with our fellow boxing fiends; we need to bring the casual fan back to the sport. The boxing fan base has to grow.
We need to abolish the myth of the “0” in a fighter’s loss column as being all important.
We have to preach the gospel that styles, not alphabet titles, make fights.
Now that I’ve got you all fired up, I’ll spring on you the biggest of the changes that must be made, because it’s at this point in the article that we do the looking back suggested in its title. And it’s at this point I may start to lose some of you.
Although they have served us well the junior/super weight classes have to go. We need to return to the days of the original 8. Fly-Bantam-Feather-Light-Welter-Middle-Lt Heavy- Heavy weight.
By decreasing the number of weight classes we increase the talent pool for each weight. By increasing the level of talent we push out the mediocre fighters, and in pushing out the mediocre fighters we decrease the likelihood of mediocre fights.
In returning to the original 8 we would also need to return to fight day weigh ins. Granted, one of the reasons this was changed was so fighters could re-hydrate properly, but we have to get away from the ridiculous weight discrepancies we’re regularly seeing. Perhaps making an adjustment to the weight limit itself would remedy the situation; using the current junior/super weight limits for their original counterparts; for example welterweight limit would become 154pounds, middle 168 and so on. Given the increase in size of the modern man these changes should’ve happened already.
Its possible, make that probable, that I have it all wrong, that none of you will agree with my turning back the clock, or should I say scales, but what is irrefutable is that boxing needs to do something drastic and calculated to maintain its standing not just amongst the combat sports but sport in general.