Your Boxing Pet Peeves And Suggestions To Rid Them?

Boxing Pet Peeves and Recommendations to Fix Them

1.) Waiting an eternity for Mayweather-Pacquiao. Either make the fight, or fuck it, and move on to other options.

2.) Judges, promoters, and networks showing favoritism to the house fighter. Undeserving Olympians who are pom-pom'ed by HBO and Lampley, just because they are Olympians and fight on HBO. This goes back through the years, (Breland, Biggs, Berto.) I almost put Jermain Taylor in there, but even though there was dispute, he did beat Hopkins twice, just wasn't the fighter that HBO pom-pom'ed him to be.

3.) Countless fighters who talk all kinds of shit like they are gonna murder an opponent and than we get a fucking 12-round Lawrence Welk waltz. Yea, that's you David Haye, you little POS!

4.) Floyd Mayweather for his personality and arrogance outside the ring. The fight that he can't stay out of trouble outside the ring.

5.) Manny Pacquiao for refusing the drug testing.
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6.) Promoters that don't allow their house fighters to fight other promoters fighters on the network.

7.) Judges that constantly treat journeymen like shit in their scoring of fights against them.

8.) Don King, Bob Arum, and Al Hayman, for their monopolistic control of fighters and networks.

9.) The WBC's 4th and 8th round optional open scoring.

10.) Too many championship belts. Going back to one could still produce a monopoly, But at least they should go back to the big two, the WBA and WBC, and the federations work to constantly unify the championships.

11.) Unification fights going back to 15-rounds, with only the most experienced refs working those fights to insure safety concerns, but keep the other fights at 12-rounds so that the 15 round distance really separates the champions from the contenders. The 15 distance could be like for Superbowls and World Series for boxing with those three rounds brought back, not to make the sport something dangerous, but to make it something special.

12. The WBC's point deductions for accidental head-butts. Accidents are unintentional and deserve no consequence of a penalty. Right now, this rule over-compensates for an unfortunate situation. You are penalizing the non-head-butted fighter for being lucky. This rule MUST be overturned by all commissions throughout the world.

13. POS PPV undercards, and often times POS PPV main events that have no business as a PPV. Every card on a PPV should be AT LEAST 3 WORD CHAMPIONSHIP FIGHTS BETWEEN TOP CONTENDERS with the fourth match a major 10-round top competitors match.

14. All boxing matches should create a sense of reasonable doubt as to how will win, have competitive matches, record-checks for quality. No more of this house-fighter against sacrificial lamb bullshit. Especially not on Premium boxing channels or PPV.

15. No special circumstances for top fighters or their top promoters or matchmakers. No little pre-fight perks for top promoters and fighters. Unless you can produce verified medical evidence who's evidence has the right to be questioned or overturned, unless there are health issues, you MUST defend your championship belt against the leading available contender every six months. When you fight the top guy in your weight class for an alphabet belt, and win an alphabet world championship, that automatically gives you the right to be the #1 contender for any other rival world championship alphabet title. And you MUST unify each belt by fighting the unification within six months.

16. All boxing federations begin round robin tournaments that can NOT be influenced by a promoter or TV network to work in culmination of world title unification matches.

17.) An international commission of executive over-site to inspect the doings of promoters, referees, and judges, with severe consequences for any convictions of bribery, fight-fixing or extortion. The suspect(s) would have the right to a fair an impartial hearing with a presumption of innocence, where evidence would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that there was bribery or corruption involved. If the international commission came back with a guilty verdict, a six month to life ban from boxing would be imposed depending on the severity of the offense. Additionally, all officials involved in boxing would have to sign a statement stating that if they engage in ANY proven bribery or corruption through the eyes of this international court tribunal they could face suspensions up to a permanent loss of license.

18.) Cosell and the world making Ali some kind of secular saint, which was and is bullshit. One cannot deny Ali's influence and powerful impact to the world of boxing on the international stage and that's great! But Howard and so much of the world made Ali out like he could do no wrong, and that's not a correct assessment either. There were good things about Ali and their were shit things about Ali, but no one wanted to talk about the shit things. And the "Ali-Act" to improve the safety standard of boxing is just some rubber-stamped bullshit to put Ali's name on something for recognition to get it passed.

Ali never did anything to create or improve fighter safety either inside the ring or outside the ring. The way Cosell pom-pom'ed Ali is the exact same way that HBO and Lampley have been pom-pomming their house fighters for the last decade.

19.) HBO trying to look for the next big star by feeding him mediocre competition rather than making competitive fights where the pom-pomer might lose. Go back to the competitiveness and greatness of Lou Dibella at the network who knew that the fans want great competitive action boxing, not just some Olympian who gets his name on HBO by fighting an assortment of stiffs. (i.e Berto vs. Freddy Hernandez? WTF!) Grow some balls, and start making some demands on Delahoya, Arum, and Hayman, that if you don't give us competitive fights, there will be no fight, period. Take the sacrificial lambs to ESPN or something against the manufactured stars, but for a premium channel at $12-$15 for it's subscription each month, there will either be competitive fights, or NO FIGHTS.

Jack

 

More drivel but I will address 13 & 18.

13. if it wasn't for PPV Boxing would be in worse shape than it is now. PPV delivers to a niche market and allows fighters who would not normally be able to do so make a living. It's a valuable marketing tool that allows a bigger piece of the pie to go the fighter.

18. I've forgotten more about Muhammad Ali than you will ever know in a thousand lifetimes. so go ahead and make your points.

Oh and 19. Don't be so stupid. The only way you can expect that arguement to fly is if all they showed was Boxing but they don't.

 

Boxing Is What It Is.

 

This is very true.

Jack

 

As it relates to Ali. Most of the criticism of the Ali stems from his treatment of two fighters, Floyd Patterson and Joe Frazier.

Remember the exercise we used to do in kiddie school where a sentence was whispered in one students ear and it gets whispered down the line and the last student is asked to repeat what he heard and it is totally different from what the first student was told. Such is the case with Floyd Patterson and Muhammad Ali. Eerything that Ali said about Patterson he said it, there is no denying it and I would be a fool to sit here and try to say anything but. Fortunately though it it more to the story of Ali and Patterson that meets the eye and it's not until you study their relationship that you realize that you've been led somewhat astray and led to believve what a certain segment would have you believe. you see , this what being a historian is all about, it's not about being able to recount fights and fighters and moments in the ring, it's not about knowing a fighters record and how many knockouts one had or draws or decisions, it's operating on the edges of history so you can get a full picture of a fighter, his era, his thoughts but more importantly the truth.

Floyd Patterson said this before his first fight with Ali: "You could get the idea that the entire sport depends on me and that if I, as some sort of homemade Sir Galahad, do not defeat The Villain, Clay,boxing will most certainly die. That is nonsense. On the other hand, and I feel very strongly about this, boxing could certainly use a new image right now. I say it and I say it flatly, that the image of a Black Muslim as the world heayweight champion disgraces the sport and the nation. Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslim scourge removed from Boxing.
By calling me "A Black White Hope" and by several other ill-advised and intemperate remarks, he has continually damaged the image of American Negroes and the Civil Rights groups working on their behalf. No decent person can look up to a champion whose credo is "hate whites'. I have nothing but contempt for the Black Muslims and that for which they stand.
I am a Roman Catholic, I do not believe God put us here to hate one another. I believe the Muslim preaching of segragation, hatrred, rebellion and violence is wrong. What religion teaches that. By preching such propoganda and not flatly condmening the murder of Malcom X who quit the Muslims, Cassius Clay is disgracing himself and the negro race."

Those are some hateful words and many will say that they are the direct product of the anger he felt when being disparged by Ali in the lead up to their first fight in November of 1965. To many the story stops there, they take it and run with it and say "see,see,see" and they glory when someone else hitches their wagon to theirs. The story didn't stop there however. Less than 5 months later in April of 1966 an article appeared in Esquire magazine titled "In defense of Cassius Clay and it was written by Foyd Patterson as told to Gay Talese and was published in the August 1966 issue. I won't repeat the whole article but I will highlight three things that Patterson said.

"The prizefighter in America is not supposed to shoot off his mouth about politics, particularly when his views oppose the Government and might influence many among the working class who follow Boxing. The prizefighter is considered by most people to be merely a tough, insensitive man, a dumb, half naked entertainer wearing a muzzled mouthpiece. he is supposed to stick to his trade-fighting and keeping his mouth shut and pretending that he hates his opponents. There is so much hate among, so much comtempt inside people who'd like you to think that they are moral, that they have to hire prizefighters to do their hating for them. And we do. We get into a ring and act out other peoples hates. We are happy to do it. how else can Negroes like Clay and myself born in the south, poor, and with little education make so much money? I think boxing is a good thing. I do not think it should be abolished, as do some of the hypocrtical editorial writers of The New York Times because the elimination of Boxing will not eliminate the hateful people, and the wars. If people did not have such things as Boxing they'd invent something else, maybe something that would not give poor people a chance at the big money."

"All the television camera's and photographers moved in close to get an action shot of Clay coming over to me with those carrots. I guess they were expecting a bloody scene but they were dissapointed. Clay handed me the carrots and I took them. The photographers took pictures,the pictures got into the papers and on television, and I guess it all helped sell tickets to the fight. But in the split second that Cassius Clays eye's met mine, I could sense that he was a little embarassed by it all. He seemed to be apologizing saying, "this is what I have to do". And later on, when we had a press conference for the fight and Clay was screaming and bragging to a bunch of sportswriters, he leaned over and whispered to me once: "You want to make some money don't you Floyd? You want to make lots of money don't you?. He seemed to feel that he had to explain his public actions to me, maybe because he goes so much further then the rest of us have, or maybe because he is such a convincing bad guy. That has probably been part of his problem. he has been too convincing"

"He was very polite and gentle throughout the evening, and when we said goodbye I called him Cassius-I never call him by his muslim name, Muhammad Ali-and then I added "It's alright if I call you Cassius isn't it? He smiled and said "anytime Floyd".

Seems to me that those words are genuine, borne out of respect not hatred, but as they say a picture paints a thousands words and these are a couple of photos from that interview. I apologize for the glare on them but I had to take a picture of a picture




It looks an awful lot like respect as opposed to htred. To me anyway.

 

Discussing Ali and Fraziers relationship is and always will be a tricky proposition

I will say this or rather ask this. Has anyone ever met Marvis Frazier? I have and have also spent some time watching the relationship between father and son. I don't want to drop all of this on Marvis' doorstep, nor will I deny that Ali said some hateful things about Frazier. But I must weigh that against what I have learned about prizefighters. As Joe Louis once said "It takes a certain amount of balls to be a fighter". What I learned about prizefighters is that they have a heart that we don't have and they can forget things pretty quick, they move on. The popular story is that since the Thrilla In Manilla that Ali and Frazier were deadly enemies, they never spoke, Frazier had no respect for Ali and would stop at nothing to get back at him. for a while I bought into that and I bought into it until I met Marvis Frazier and observed him in the company of Joe and I had to question if it was Marvis and others who were actually pulling the strings. Something wasn't quite right.

I started doing some studying on Ali and Frazier's relationship and everywhere I looked it became obvious that Fraziers dislike for Ali became amplified as time progressed which is totally against how fighters usually react to one another. I consider myself a pretty good judge of character I think I can detect honesty in a person and on the other side of that dishonesty as well and as the years went by I detected more dishonesty than honesty in Fraziers hatred and then I happened upon something that to me put this into perspective and this is what I found. Watch it with an open mind and just tell me what you think.
[video=youtube;QJk_PvCunFQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJk_PvCunFQ&playnext=1&list=PLBA3EC79CE1DDEBE1[/video]

 

Totally agree with you. Only a very small percentage of their programming revolves around boxing.

Nevertheless, in recent years HBO seems to have fallen to second place behind Showtime in terms of significant/exciting bouts. I use to rate Showtime behind HBO 5-10 years ago but a lot has changed since then.

 

Oh yea,

That may be true that only a small part of HBO is devoted to boxing. That's not the problem. The problem is the quality of presentation has not been the same since Lou Dibella at the helm, resulting in HBO feeding the rising stars C+ competition, instead of doing what Showtime has been doing. Buying better and more competitive fights. It's not so much for HBO the time devoted to boxing, it's in the quality of the fights. Unsure of this assessment? Look at Boxing After Dark in the years during Dibella. Now look at B.A.D after Dibella.

With Greenberg gone, maybe HBO might begin to move back to the philosophy of the best fighters having the best fights, instead of trying to build a star through mediocre matches.

Jack

 

Another factor which seems to have affected the quality of HBO's fights are their relationship with Al Haymon. Haymon somehow has the hook up at HBO as he consistently manages to get his fighters on HBO against poor opposition.

 

My biggest problem with boxing these days is the clinching. I think refs should take a LOT of points away for clinching... i think it is ok when a guy is hurt or within reason. hard to explain, but i think you guys who have watched long enough know what i am talking about. there is a point where it become unreasonable.

a boxer should be able to fight on the inside, clinch quick and break, or move away, step to the side or fucking run away for all i care. too tiring? awwww that's a shame, i thought you were supposed to be in supreme condition to be a top pedigree boxer.

 

this historian stuff made me remember a quote from a play i saw once a good number of years ago... called the History Boys

"This is History, distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be...."

 

According to this Pacquiao has agreed to Olympic style testing.

steroidsources.com » Olympic Style Steroid Testing Okay for Pacquiao, But not Under USADA

I have a few questions. First of all, assuming he is on PEDs, will he experience a serious decline in his performance once he stops them. Second, is Pac not wanting the United State Anti Doping Agency to conduct the tests because he can establish a "work around" with the other agency?

Most people agree that Mayweather is an asshole and a pussy, and most agree that Pacqiao is a real champion who fights everyone and never disappoints the fans. But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that Floyd is right in demanding PED testing.

 

Jack, there is a lot of stuff in there.

I think we all are upset that Floyd-Pac hasn't happened, so I agree there.

It definitely disappoints me to hear fighters talk so tough and then not back it up, to be perfectly honest it only annoys me because I am so easily suckered in by it! One of my undying passions for boxing is that i buy into the hype and i love it! So maybe I should be more disappointed in myself haha

I never quite agreed to the WBC headbutt rule....

My biggets pet peeve on your list is the poor undercards on PPV. I really wish we could get a top to bottom quality card for $50. Again tho, I keep buying them, maybe I should look in the mirror. Boxing has found a way to keep the loyal die-hard suckers like me buying their broadcasts... I can;t blame them, PPV sales are trending up, not down.

Boxing's biggest problem is that it really doesn' have a problem. The promoters and fighters and top level managers/matchmakers are making plenty of money. Where is their incentive to change anything? Sure boxing has lost some popularity in the USA, but the whole rest of the world still supports boxing as a thriving sport and it still does decent in the USA as well.

 

It depends on the PED. Half-lives need to be considered. Some drugs are oil based others water based.

Its really easy to trick the system and enjoy the benefits. My personal experience with gear has taught me that you can grow and get stronger and maintain up to 50% of what you acquired. The major downside is depression. Thinking you cant benefit without it. However that in itself doesnt take effect until months after. I think a boxer can take a trenbolone winstrol cycle and not gain too much weight but get hard and strong. I truly believe pacquiao has taken PED. I dont recall any fighter going up in weight and crushing bigger people the way he has. Its as if he has gotten stronger as he has gone up in weight. His issues with drug testing confirms my suspicions. An honest man has nothing to fear. Much like baseball, if our best fighter/player were to get caught, it would devastate our sport. I wonder if he has already tested positive and its been covered up. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there is soo much money at stake.

 

Oh Yea,

The holding and clinching shit goes on unpenalized way too much. I don't know about taking away a lot of points for clinching. My issue is that they hardley take away ANY points for clinching. Wouldn't it have been great to see Ruiz DQ'd for clinching and watch Stone go apeshit?! hahahaha.

Great post!

Jack

 

Oh and Matos, thanks for the info. Learned a lot from your posts on Cassius.

 

One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that boxers are immediately written off after one loss. In the UFC, you win some, lose some, but you continue to face the best regardless. And the UFC makes money off of all those fights.

Personally, I have more respect and admiration for a guy like Amir Khan who came back from a devasting KO defeat than I do for a cherry pickers like Canelo or JCC Jr.

Boxing fans need to let go of the obsession with Os. If a fighter is undefeated, it doesn't necessarily mean he's unbeatable. You have to look closer at their level opposition and also analyze whom he didn't fight during his era. Casual fans and some hardcore fans are so clueless.

 

Well said Reb. There is no shame in losing, especially if you are fighting the best. Albeit Khan didnt lose to a top fighter, but he is in there fighting top guys now working his way back... including a gutsy performance against a big puncher in Maidana.

 

+5! Thank you Rebs! The loss of the "0" is NOT a death sentence in boxing, but too many treat it like it is. If a classic fight produces a loss, make the rematch. If they go 1-1, make a trilogy!

Jack

 

Another one of my pet peeves is the structure of boxing. If we all had it our way, tomrorow we'd hear about a welterweight round robbin between Pacquiao, Mayweather, Ortiz, Khan, and other relevant welterweights. This would get fans extremely excited. However, as we all know, things don't work this way because of competing promotional companies, competing networks, and it's not as profitable as milking a fighter until the cow is completely dry.