Boxing’s Age of Ambiguous

Boxing’s Age of Ambiguous
As the Great Old Warriors Ride Off Into the Sunset, What Young Guns Will Cowboy Up?

By David P. Greisman

Superstars retire, no longer capable of holding on to the unearthly skills that made them stand out from the pack. While important factors that made them into the venerable steadfast champions of recent, will not be enough to continually compete in a field where the advantage tilts towards the younger, stronger and hungrier.

After Terence Crawford Feud, Are Sanctioning Bodies Bad For Boxing?

In today’s episode, the crew breaks down one of boxing’s biggest debates after Terence Crawford went on his Instagram to complain about the WBC. Are sanctioning bodies simply part of the game, or have they completely lost control of the sport? We also take a hard look at the Ring title and ask whether it can still be considered legitimate if champions are not required to defend it.

Thursday | Dec 4, 2025

A void is left, as audiences demand an ever-increasing amount of talent and charisma to take the place of their old heroes. It is a conundrum that is quite common in the sporting world, from the NBA’s final goodbye to a creaky and injured Michael Jordan while blatantly wishing that Kobe Bryant will fit snugly into number 23’s old shoes, to professional boxing’s ritual practice of serving up timeworn pugilists as tests to developing fighters.

And it is in professional boxing today and in the next couple of years that we will see our big names and attractions of the past decade pack it in, deciding that they’ve had enough, while fans yearn for the next Mike Tyson or Oscar De La Hoya to ignite a new boxing explosion, hoping for a return to the heydays of the welterweight wars of the eighties or the brilliant heavyweight battles during the Vietnam Era.

Just this past year we’ve bid adieu to linear champion Lennox Lewis, foul fireball Ricardo Mayorga, and respected ringmasters Raul Marquez and Paulie Ayala (after the same fight card, no less), and there’s a growing list of fighters who should hang up their gloves quite soon. Former pound-for-pound denizens Roy Jones, Jr and Oscar De La Hoya have fallen from their mighty peaks after poor outings against Antonio Tarver and Glencoffe Johnson (in which RJ hit the canvas due to his no longer being able to avoid the heavy hits), and Felix Sturm and Bernard Hopkins (whom the Golden Boy found to just be too big and sound to get away with using his fading speed and stamina). Great White Hypes Wladimir Klitschko and Joe Mesi have been betrayed by their chins and may be in serious danger of catastrophic consequences if they continue fighting. Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield have barely held on to the fringes of the heavyweight division with their frail hopes of regaining the thrones that they’ve not seen in years, and would probably not be able to physically climb onto anyways.

The heavyweight division is in shambles, and the lower weight classes are full of potential champions who fight too rarely to hit the mainstream. As a result, the most excitement lately has come from two middleweights, 39 year-old technician Bernard Hopkins and a Felix “Tito” Trinidad who had been retired for 28 months after being dominated by the former. Is it truly feasible to expect many more fights from 35 year-olds Tarver and Johnson, who are yet to see superstardom anyways, or ringworn Marco Antonio Barrera, who was dismantled handily a year ago by the phenomenal Filipino, Manny Pacquiao.

It’s doubtful, and hence in an industry where the money starts at the scales with featherweights and ends with men twice their size, it’s imperative that a Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto or Diego Corrales hits the big time soon, or that the Shane Mosleys, Floyd Mayweathers and Erik Moraleses rise once again to the occasion, or else the fighters and the sweet science may just drift into obscurity.