What's Wrong With the Business of Boxing

Last year, in the last fight which this blog has covered directly (due to economic reasons I am no longer in a position to watch and analyze major fights), Tomasz Adamek and Steve Cunningham waged my Fight of the Year. It was also a Fight of the Year candidate for Ring Magazine, for Yahoo Sports, and for various other quite respectable boxing or sports writers with far more 'street cred' than me. It ran free on Versus tv and anyone who saw it would have been quite willing to watch the rematch on HBO or Showtime in the primetime Saturday slot. In fact, many who watched it (based on my own fannish reaction) would have paid to see the rematch on Pay-Per-View before paying to see Mayweather-Marquez or Pacquiao-Hatton. Not to take anything away from any of the listed fighters or the superb knockout Pacquiao scored over Hatton, but the second did not hold a candle to Adamek-Cunningham and the first couldn't possibly. Perhaps more importantly, as I wrote in the blog, Adamek and Cunningham put on the kind of fight that proved they were men fully and entirely deserving of the kind of big payoff an HBO or Showtime slot carries.

So now we get the following from The Ring's website: Adamek and Cunningham are not fighting their rematch because no American tv station is going to carry it.

This pisses me off, even though I am no longer in a position to watch the fight, because the first fight was both so good and so arguable in its split decision finish that it demanded a rematch. It was not exactly 'controversial', I didn't see a serious problem with Adamek winning the split nod after his display of power, guts, and will. However, one can question whether a man who only conclusively won a single round, and only was able to claim to win three others because he scored timely knockdowns when he really needed them, was truly the best man in the ring. A strong case can be made for Cunningham, who outboxed Adamek whenever he invested in boxing and who outfought Adamek with plenty of guts and will of his own in the championship rounds, winning 8 rounds of twelve. I scored the fight for Cunningham by two points, off the telecast.

More importantly, though, is the fact that the fight was great. Cunningham nearly stopped Adamek in round three, but then Adamek managed to pull a split second knockdown to reclaim the round and seemed on the verge of stopping Cunningham. In round two, Cunningham was winning the round by a definite (if close) margin when Adamek threw a right hand for a flash knockdown. These were not the only moments of excitement in the fight.

Yet a great fight is apparently not enough to sell HBO or Showtime on Adamek or Cunningham. Nor are great storylines built for HBO's 24/7 show. Adamek is a Polish national who has become a star in Newark, NJ while Cunningham is an American from Philly who is a star in Poland after two great fights with former IBF titlist Krzyzstof Wlodarczyk. Both men would make for good tv, as people as well as fighters.

The problem is the current star driven, pay-cable and pay-per-view driven, 'event' driven business model that is slowly strangling boxing. The fight that will 'save boxing' will not be in the ring. The fight that will 'save boxing' will be between cable executives, tv executives, presidents of sancitioning bodies, and fight promoters that gives boxing fans access to quality televised fights that can produce fans willing to pay for live gates and big pay-per-view events. HBO and Showtime should worry less on the fighters they have contracted to fight on their shows and more about putting together the best shows. Promoters need to put their fighters in real fights before they fight for world titles, against real opponents that will give them credence when they do fight for titles. I understand Andre Berto is a talented kid, but when the rematch is over and done with he is still a talented kid whose two biggest fights were with fellow contender Luis Collazo... not the welterweight champion of the world.

Boxing writers do a great deal to address the problem, but some don't do near enough and some actively make it worse. Writing in defense of mandatory title fights when the system of ranking fighters FOR mandatory title fights is completely broken, writing in defense of the ridiculous overabundance of both weight divisions and 'world championships', attacking those writers or publications who do make an effort to present a legitimate and independent opinion not subservient to promoters or sanctioning bodies, or belittling the IBO as a joke despite it being an actual honest organization seeking to find some way to create an organized system of sanity in boxing (and you will note that in the above list I have both defended and attacked The Ring, and both defended and attacked quite a few boxing writers) is more than just counterproductive. It is actively aggravating the problem.

Now, contrary to popular history, there was always some muddle about who the real champion was. Even before we had private 'sanctioning bodies' looking to make money off of boxing, we had a muddle of state athletic commissions and national champions all claiming a piece of the pie. However, once upon a time, these muddles could be easily cleared up by fights. Indeed, in many circumstances, the fans, writers, and promoters would not allow the muddles NOT to be cleared up by fights. It was too much better for everyone for the fights to happen.

Today, the circumstances are different. More fans are less willing to demand quality and these fans keep the sordid business of today's boxing alive, while many of the fans who do demand quality have voted with their feet and so further marginalized boxing. Boxing is no longer the true anarcho-capitalist mess it was before the WBA, WBC, and IBF but, instead, a feudal system ruled by promoters and cable television networks who serve to give credibility to or remove credibility from whichever organization or institution serves their interests while not really paying any so called 'sanctioning body' any respect. The practice of stripping titles, allegedly intended to insure the champions fight the top challengers, has become a system by which organizations use to extort money from fighters while promoters cooperate in order to protect their fighters from real fights. Clearly, that practice has failed.

The free market system under which boxing formerly operated was not ideal, but it was better than the current state of feudalism. However, there are better alternatives available. Tennis, golf, and even beach volleyball (despite being 'fringe' sports in the US) have strong organizing entities controlled by the athletes in association with one another. An 'Association of Boxing Professionals' could do the sport a great deal of good, especially in conjuction with a championship system based on beating the champion and a legitimate and disinterested set of rankings such as those offered by the IBO or The Ring. Promoters are a necessary part of the sport, money must be raised to present shows and shows must be sold, but promoters should be legitimate and licensed professionals subject to ethical review rather than any carnival huckster who can raise money. Don King and Dennis Rappaport have done the sport of boxing as much harm as they have good, despite their success in promoting fighters and fights, more legitimate promoters like Dan Goosen and Bob Arum (and even Oscar de La Joya, who any of my readers know was not my favorite fighter but seems to have good intentions as a promoter) are content to take advantage of the inadequacies of the existing system in absence of any other means to compete with outright carnival barkers, and out-and-out crooks like the late Rick Parker and buffoons like Gary Shaw only damage the sport. Some promoters, with a genuine record of honest practices as such, (Sugar Ray Leonard and longtime referee Richard Steele come to mind) have even ultimately proven unable to compete with more dishonest competition in the long haul.

So then: an organized association of fighters and their lawfully employed representatives to control the sport and help guarantee the money will be there, a legitimate organization (working with such an association) to rank fighters and manage the championship process, and a licensing program, standard of ethics, and process of ethical and procedural review for promoters. Does anyone believe the sport would not be better off with such a framework to support it? The problem with the alphabet cartel is not that the sport does not need management, but rather that they are entirely inept at management and only exist to milk money from the failed system they perpetuate. A national boxing commission in the US and an international association of national boxing commissions would certainly not hurt either. If the international regulatory bodies actually consisted of the national regulatory bodies, that would be a huge step in the right direction and would certainly enjoy more success than the IBO.

I don't expect any of this to happen anytime soon. I don't really expect it to happen at all. But I am voicing this concern because things are not getting better. Boxing is not dead and may not be dying, but the business model supporting it has proven to be close to the worst business model on which it can operate and still survive. We need something better.