Clean Mud

Boxing has disappeared.  And so have its champions.  Everything that was good about boxing has faded away.   The unique, unmatched Muhammad Ali has all but vanished.  The crafty Sugar Ray Leonard has slipped away just like the marvelous Marvin Hagler and the ageless Roberto Durán.   Mike Tyson, the youngest undisputed heavyweight world champion ever, suffered a fall from grace that was so quick that nothing could have saved him.

Evander Holyfield’s biggest fight will no longer be in the ring but against the New York State Athletic Commission and their medical suspension.  The lonely Lennox Lewis has retired and expectedly will never surface again.  All of the great fighters are gone and all that remains is a shadow of a sport left in shambles that has subsequently become influenced by self-consuming, morally bankrupt bosses, manipulated by one-eyed judges, and marked with dubious referees. Boxing is currently fighting for its survival as even its own tradition is in crisis.  The need to restructure professional boxing has never been more essential than now.  Unlike before, boxing has no more stories to tell.  No characters to love.  Boxing used to be a theater, where drama would unfold. Heroes and villains were made, like Joe Louis and his triumph against Max Schemeling.  The fight used to symbolize a struggle.  It was the grand stage where a live representation of a war between good and evil occurred.  Boxing was once, as George Foreman contended, “the sport to which all other sports aspire.”  But now, the boxer has been squandered.  His fight has dissolved into its own tragedy, replacing its own aged je ne sais quoi with a poor ostentation that has all but destroyed the sport.

Howard Cosell, as quoted in Thoams Hauser’s 1986 Muhammad Ali:  His Life and Times, described the new nature of boxing as “no longer worthy of civilized society.  It is run by self-serving crooks, who are called promoters . . . Professional boxing is utterly immoral.  It’s not capable of reformation.  I now favor the abolition of professional boxing.  You’ll never clean it up.  Mud can never be clean.”  

How does boxing, once the sport that all other sports aspired to be, decay into being mud?  The complexities of such a problem outreach any one simple answer.  But without a doubt, boxing has regrettably developed into an unredeeming spectacle.  Despite the perils of boxing, there are a multitude of solutions, coming from both inside the ring and outside the ring that, when placed together, could maybe help clean some mud.

Perhaps the largest fissure that has plagued professional boxing is the lack of an authentic and enigmatic undisputed champion.  Inside the ring, there is no longer a Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, or Joe Frazier. Scrolling through the list of current champions is anything but a testament of household names.  There are no unanimous champions in any weight division.

There are only three weight classes out of 17 that presently possess a champ that holds more than one belt among the WBA, WBC, and IBF.  These three are Kostya Tszyu, the proclaimed, “Champion Emeritus of the World” from the Junior Welterweight division, Cory Spinks, the “Super World Champion” from the Welterweight division, along with Middleweight “Super World Champion” Bernard Hopkins.   These fighters are the only three among professional boxing’s 47 champions that maintain two championships.

While even the casual fan might recognize these names, the rest of the world does not. Furthermore, none of these three champions register in the top three weight groups, which begs the question of whether or not boxing can survive without a hard-line identifiable Heavyweight champion.  

Within the Heavyweight division there are three different champions.  WBA champ John Ruiz, WBC title holder Vitali Klitsclko, and IBF champ Chris Byrd all own a share of boxing’s heavyweight championship.  It is likely that more people know who the WWE’s Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and Goldberg are than these three heavyweights.  The dilemma inside the ring is inconsistent fighting, whether the fighters are heavyweights or not.  Titles go from fighter to fighter too quickly.  There is no time for a champion to construct himself a winning image.

According to Wickipedia, when all professional boxing organizations are considered, there have been 10 different heavyweight champions since March 2001.  That equals a staggering average of about three different champions a year over the past three years.  Inside the ring, boxing has shifted it honors too rapidly.  But the problem is not so simple that it can be fixed just by establishing a reigning unanimous champion.

In April of 2000, Lennox Lewis held the IBF, IBO, WBA, and WBC titles and boxing was still a dormant sport, leaving itself outside looking in at the majority of the sporting community.  So, it is fair to say that at the very least, for professional boxing to start regaining its momentum, it would have to see a popular and charismatic undisputed heavyweight champion.  As great of a fighter Lewis may have been, his life as a champion was anything but stellar. Someone, somewhere must catch the people’s imagination and become their champ, while simultaneously never failing to defend his titles in the ring. This how boxing’s downward spiral can be reversed.  An authentic champ will convince people he can do anything, beat anyone.  A great champion can even assure the people that he can clean mud.

In order for such an individual to emerge, he would need help, help from outside of the ring. But outside of the ring, boxing is infected with such things as fixed matches, crooked organizers, and exploited fighters.  Even racism still raises its ugly head from time to time.  Managers and trainers are becoming more and more vulnerable to the exhausting demand of money and its burden.

A majority of boxing’s challenges outside the ring are tell-tale signs of social inadequacies. The sport itself has fallen victim to the so-called benefits of business and advertising. The troubles outside of the ring can be solved just like the ones inside the ring. There have been arguments made by the likes of Senator John McCain for a single national association to regulate the sport, headed by one national commissioner. Conceivably, there could also be a federal advisory panel to protect fighters from being exploited.

McCain also co-sponsored a 1996 bill that would have founded a medical-care standard for all fighters.  Stricter laws enforcing tighter rules for judging and rigged fights could easily be introduced.  Regardless, the problems that blight boxing outside of the ring must be solved, most likely by people outside of the sport.  That is the only genuine solution for a corrupt institution like profession boxing.

Presently, the sport is saturated with individuals who have dirty hands, hands that are unable to mold a better boxing establishment. It is people like McCain who must step in and resolve the problems outside of the ring and then, coupled with the resolutions inside the ring, boxing can do the impossible– regain its prominence, boast the greatest champion, own fair and firm statutes and maybe even clean the mud.