Somewhere along the way, boxing fell down and has been unable to get back up—just like the old lady in the commercial. But when she called out for help, there was someone listening. Boxing’s call has gone unanswered for years now. And so, a sport that once was must-see action just lies there, unresponsive, virtually comatose.
Every now and again, Floyd Mayweather will fight or Manny Pacquiao will knock out someone, and the sport feels resuscitated – for about an hour. Then it curls back into the fetal position.
Where have all the champions gone? Surely someone could go down the prolonged list of acronym belt-holders and say, “There. There are the champions.” And you would not recognize most of them. There is no one to compare to Sugar Ray Leonard or Roberto Duran or Tommy Hearns or Marvin Hagler or Wilfredo Benitez or Aaron Pryor or Alexis Arguello or Julio Ceasar Chavez or Roy Jones Jr. or Pernell Whitaker or Oscar De La Hoya or Felix Trinidad or Hector Camacho.
That’s a baker’s dozen worth of champions from the 1980s and 1990s who were of style and substance. They were reasons to watch the so-called “sweet science.” And that list did not even include heavyweights. It would not have been fair to go back to the golden ages of boxing, where legends Sugar Ray Robinson, Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, etc., were the kings of the ring.
There was a time when the heavyweight champion of the world was an iconic figure, the symbolic “baddest man on the planet.” As off-center as he was, Mike Tyson was a boxing meter-mover, perhaps the biggest of all time when he was at his best. He did his work in the late 1980s and 1990s, when there was Evander Holyfield, ageless George Foreman, Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis, Michael Moorer all sharing the heavyweight crown (with a few flukes) over a decade.
The point is, there was genuine interest and excitement in boxing. In most every weight class, there were fighters that were skilled and interesting, if not complex.
Now the Klitschoko brothers, Vitali and Wladimir, reign over the largest classification, with no challengers of merit. They are from the Ukraine and have the personalities of, well, Ukrainians.
Worse for boxing, even if Mayweather and Pacquiao do come together and deliver an epic, where does that leave the sport? What would be the next highly anticipated fight? A rematch?
The word is that promoter Bob Arum is holding up an agreement to put those two together. How silly is that? Why is a promoter needed in a fight that all boxing fans (and even the curious) are clamoring to see? But then, it’s boxing, meaning no need to be surprised at the ridiculous.
Take a glance at the list of “champions” of the WBC, WBA, WBO, IBF and it reads like an international roll call. Beyond that, none of them generate so much as an inkling of interest.
Perhaps there is one Great African-American Hope to pull us from these boxing doldrums. Middleweight champion Andre Ward, an Olympic gold medalist, has the goods. He’s skilled, humble, tough, smart and charismatic. And he gets it, more so than most.
In an interview, he said, “You’ve got to use your brain. When you’re a thinking man’s fighter, sometimes people take that as if you’re a reluctant warrior. But my ultimate goal is to become a master of my sport, where I can control the other man effortlessly.”
How can you not feel good about someone who thinks like that? But the problem persists: Who would be his opponent that would energize the masses? Can’t think of one – unless Leonard wants to come out of retirement at age 56.
There was time when fathers and sons watched boxing together. It was sort of a rite of passage. Many fights came on free TV on Saturdays, on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. You could actually sit home with your family and see wonderful championship fights.
Hardly is there a match worth watching now, much less worth the $59.95 pay-per-view price tag ($69.95 in HD). Many have turned to MMA (mixed martial arts), which is even more barbaric and Stone Age than boxing. That the brutal “sport” could even approach boxing speaks to how hard it has fallen.
The top young athletes are eschewing the boxing gym for basketball or football. The fan base that fiends for a revival is discouraged. And the best fight out there cannot get made.
Not sure how boxing can get off the mat. The referee is counting.
Curtis Bunn is a best-selling novelist and national award-winning sports journalist who has worked at The Washington Times, NY Newsday, The New York Daily News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
