HOW TO CLEAN UP PROFESSIONAL BOXING
By CLIFF CLARK
29.12 - Aren´t you sick of the
whole damned alphabet soup business? It mucks up professional
boxing terribly. I´m sick of fighters not fighting
appropriate opponents, and mediocre fighters being
proclaimed world champion. I would give anything if
someone could engineer a solution. I´m sick
of Holyfield-Ruiz and Tyson-Neilson style fights.
I want to see Oquendo fight Lewis, Mosley fight De
La Hoya, Jones fight Michalczewski etc.
Larry Holmes and Muhammad Ali fought
when they were both past 30 years of age, and in Holmes´
eighth title defense. That horrible one-sided fight
should have taken place several years earlier, when
it would have been a good fight. Ali, like many other
champions in boxing, got away with defending the title
against unranked fighters. Instead of fighting Holmes,
Ali hand-picked challengers like Richard Dunn, Jean
Pierre Coopman and Leon Spinks. I point this out as
a glaring example of Professional Boxing´s biggest
problem: Multiple champions and organizations. The
sad fact is that the multiple organizations that recognize
the multiple champions will generally rank any fighter
their champion wants to fight for a hefty sanctioning
fee.
Professional boxing needs to have
one internationally recognized champion ruling each
division. It needs a system to force the champions
to fight their number one ranked challengers, and
it needs a system to force the top contenders to fight
each other, instead of opponents they can easily brutalize.
Professional tennis and golf organized into monolithic
organizations that have the clout to discourage alphabet
soup. That´s what has to happen in professional
boxing on a worldwide basis. Professional boxing needs
a few strong individuals with good business acumen
and organizational skills, who can organize a network
of professional boxing's power players. The network
can work to slowly consolidate all the titles and
organizations. What is needed is one powerful, global,
controlling body that recognizes one champion in each
weight class, and that makes great fights happen.
That´s a dream that could come true.
I suggest a system that mandates each
divisional champion fight the number one ranked challenger
every three months. Each challenger ranked 2 through
9 would fight a designated opponent every three months
also. Number 2 would fight number 3. Number 4 would
fight number 5. Number 6 would fight number 7, and
number 8 would fight number 9.
This system would inject tremendous
excitement, activity and new blood into the game.
As ranked fighters are beaten and drop out of contention,
they would be replaced with young and hungry athletes,
confident they´ll get their chance if they keep
winning. Instead of waiting around years for a fight,
good boxers would stay busy, honest promoters would
get rich, and fans would see many more great fights.
Based on the results of the fights,
the list of contenders should be revised every three
months by a ratings board of genuine experts. The
board should be comprised only of former top professional
boxing trainers, and former top professional boxers,
who are neurologically and mentally fit. There are
many of them to choose from. What is needed are a
few wealthy and successful former boxers of great
integrity, who are still rabid fans. Guys who still
follow boxers in every weight class. I wouldn't be
opposed to including a couple of boxing´s better
authors and journalists on the panel, but this shouldn´t
be overdone. Figure skating, springboard/platform
diving, and gymnastics are individual sports that
generally have only top former athletes and coaches
judging their top events. The decisions of those judges
ultimately determine the ranking of the athletes in
those sports. Boxing needs to upgrade it´s judging
and ranking specialists.
Some people may feel that to mandate
that champions and contenders fight every three months,
would be a little rough on people who manage, promote
and telecast fights. The fact is that some fighters
nowadays think 2 fights a year is being active. Of
course when you have millions of dollars in the bank,
you may think 2 fights are plenty, but the people
hurt the most by this inactivity are the four, six,
and eight round prelim fighters. Some heavyweight
fighters can afford to go a year between fights. They
can fight a badly overmatched opponent, and make 100s
of thousands or even millions of dollars. When main
event fighters don´t fight, the prelim fighters
don´t get a chance to earn their little pocket
change. The boxing game languishes when main event
fighters loaf around and sit on their bank account.
The problem of top fighters not fighting
is not a new one. Jess Willard took it pretty easy
after he won the heavyweight championship. Jack Dempsey
let the heavyweight championship rust for a three-year
stretch before he fought Gene Tunney.
On the opposite extreme, some top
pros of that time, like Ted "Kid" Lewis,
fought over 300 professional fights. Lewis fought
from 1909 through 1929. After fighting 97 fights in
the previous two years, Ted Lewis said he wanted to
"pace myself" in 1913. He fought only 12
fights that year, including 11 fights scheduled for
15 to 20 rounds. In 1914 Ted Lewis fought 3 bruising
20 round battles in less than a month. He quickly
fought two more grueling 20 round fights for a total
of five 20 rounders in 64 days. He wrote that he was
in the top physical condition of his life during that
period, because he knew he had to face tougher fighters
than he had ever fought before in 20 round fights.
He had 145 fights under his belt through 1914, and
he didn´t fight Jack Britton until 1915. Britton
became his best opponent, and they fought 20 times.
In those days the gloves were much smaller and the
hands were wrapped and taped a little harder. It is
true that the science of the sport has advanced a
lot, and you have better pure boxers in the ring today
than ever before; but the fighters of Ted Lewis´
day were generally tougher, harder, better conditioned,
and more durable than most boxers of today.
I´m not an old timer, and I´m
not one to say today´s fighters are soft. My
only reason for telling the Ted Lewis story is because
you hear some folks say that fighters need months
of time to recuperate from a fight. Obviously if a
fighter takes a beating, or gets knocked out in brutal
fashion, he needs a long rest. In certain cases boxers
should have their boxing licenses revoked. If a fighter
is caught napping and suffers a one punch knock out--such
as happened to Lennox Lewis against Rahman--he should
be ready to fight again in 90 days, as long as he
checks out neurologically. A good alert boxer with
finished boxing skills should not get hit with many
damaging punches. He should be able to fight competitive
fights frequently. Certainly one fight every three
months is not excessive.
Of course the tough part to reforming
professional boxing will be to consolidate all the
titles and alphabet organizations. That will take
some ingenuity and cooperation among top promoters,
managers, publishers, and others who have a lot to
gain by cleaning up professional boxing. Professional
boxing needs to combine the strength of it´s
most influential entities to create one dominant worldwide
organization that can repel unsavory influences, create
a superior and well structured regulatory environment,
and build the international respect it´s community
and fans have always dreamed of.
I´ll reiterate that tennis and
golf are individual sports, of international scope,
that have successfully resisted the attempts by interlopers
to split up, and mess up the their ranks. They do
it through the determined cooperation of resourceful
and honest professionals.
