By Cliff Rold
There’s a great fight this Saturday, one sure to garner mainstream press and millions of eyes. It doesn’t cost fifty dollars. It doesn’t even cost the premium channel ten or so per month. This one is free as long as you’re one of the just-about-everyone who has basic cable.
Too bad for boxing; this fight isn’t one of ours.
In the latest move that hails the winner-take/all-American competition that has erupted between the worlds of professional boxing and mixed martial arts, the UFC is giving away one of the two or three best money matches in its sport this Saturday on Spike TV. In boxing terms, this is Manny Pacquaio-Marco Antonio Barerra II going live on ESPN. In business terms, this is the UFC making a move to overwhelm its elder cousin.
If the bout between UFC light heavyweight champion Rampage Jackson and Pride middleweight and light heavyweight champ Dan Henderson is a solid fight (unlike the flub that was Jackson-Chuck Liddell), they’ll be a hell of a big step closer.
In some ways, 2007 has been a year of great rebound for boxing. It’s delivering a stream of red hot fights at a time when anything less would be both dangerous and foolish. Such is the beauty of competition. Unfortunately, no matter how many great fights are made, audience size is a huge component in any sports popularity and Jackson-Henderson can deliver an audience no major fight has seen in years.
Call it the benefit of a business model. UFC has one. Boxing does not. UFC is 21st century sports marketing and savvy; boxing is pre-Keynesian laissez faire capitalism in a world without room for it. It’s a series of independent contracts going to the highest bidder, regardless of whether or not the end result of all those contracts eventually result in lower real bids and less real audience.
In less esoteric terms: if boxing doesn’t want to find itself molested like an Idaho Senator five years from now, it better find its answer to Jackson-Henderson.
Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I can’t help but fear the day boxing is running at 2 A.M. with IKSA Kickboxing on the Ocho. It sounds silly, but I remember staying up with my Dad to watch the NBA Finals highlights on CBS during the week where he didn’t watch Nightline. It’s not a good sign when the best thing to happen to boxing this fall might not be any of the fights but actually the participation of World welterweight champ Floyd Mayweather on “Dancing with the Stars.”
Boxing fans are already seeing some of what they want; some of it, like JERMAIN TAYLOR-KELLY PAVLIK and JOE CALZAGHE-MIKKEL KESSLER (caps are obnoxious but I’m fighting for the fighting I like best here) for only the premium cost of HBO and Showtime. This clearly isn’t about boxing’s death beds or black eyes but it is about more than boxing fans.
It’s about audience growth. UFC already has to its benefit both greater centralization and cohesion than boxing. Now it’s putting a superfight out there for the world to see. The closest boxing has come to this in the last five years are the two Contender bouts between Sergio Mora and Peter Manfredo.
Thus it hasn’t come close to Jackson-Henderson in a while.
UFC is giving a big one away and I doubt this will be the last. Someone in boxing has to find a way to get a major fight before the most possible eyes, and with a fighter who isn’t on the other side of AARP, if it’s going to keep up. Bob Arum stated earlier this year that, if Pavlik beats Taylor for the middleweight title, he’ll try to do just that.
Let’s hope he does…or that someone does. Boxing needs to remind the world that it can be great again and it can’t just remind the faithful. Step one in competing with the world of MMA was showing that boxing can still deliver great fights regularly.
The next step is making sure new people watch them.
Crazy Cocalumbia: Staying at 140 lbs., I’ve had a chance to see the battle between Ricardo Torres (32-1, 28 KO, #10, WBO titlist) of Columbia and Kendall Holt (22-2, 12 KO) and, well, I’ve seen worse as far as stoppage go. For those who missed it, Torres came back from an impossible points deficit in the 11th round to land a picturesque left hook along the ropes and, within the next minute, trap Holt on the other side of the ring, raining power punches that had Holt bending at the waist on the way to the stoppage.
Was it a bad stoppage? Considering that Holt had just fired a shot as the ref stepped in, the answer is probably yes. But it was more Antwun Echols-Charles Brewer than Michael Dokes-Mike Weaver II. That said, the beer storm that hit the ring after the knockdown was inexcusable and the referee should have halted the action until it subsided. Both Holt and Torres were sliding around at the end like Dorothy Hamill on a laxative and either could have twisted an ankle or worse.
For the best report anywhere in the sport on this entertaining brawl, and one of the only reports really though that doesn’t take from its quality, look no further than Boxing Scene’s Keith Idec, covering live from ringside: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=10138
Cliff’s Notes:
The “0” Goes: Russian born and Australian based Victor Oganov (26-1, 26 KO) can take solace that in his first loss, a ninth round stoppage at the hands of Colombian veteran Fulgencio Zuniga (20-2, 17 KO), he evoked the ghost of Jack Dempsey. Honey, he forgot to duck…
A Weekend Without Bloodshed: I actually took Labor Day weekend off, Kerouac-ing the state of Virginia with my lovely fiancée. I mention this only because if any loyal readers are back this direction, I recommend a stay in lovely Staunton. I didn’t know much about the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson before pulling off for gas. It wound up being home for the night. Outdoor college band festivals, Metallica cover bands in the bars, and a beautifully rebuilt rendition of the Shakespearean Blackfriar’s Theatre made Staunton one of my highlights of the year. We caught an awesome staging of “Love’s Labour Lost,” a play I missed in my days as an English major. It’s worth a look…
Fight of the Year Update: Props to the camps of both World super middleweight champ Joe Calzaghe (43-0, 32 KO) and number one contender Mikkel Kessler (39-0, 29 KO) for bringing their press tour stateside. They got as much press, at least online, in the last few days as they’ve had since the fight was signed and that’s good. Regulars know what I think of this fight and I’d lie if I didn’t point out that I was telling the world about Kessler a good two years before just about anyone else. Only 56 days (November 3rd live at 5 PM EST/2 PM PST on HBO) until the best fight, on paper, boxing has to offer. I’ll be back in a reliable seven…You that way, I this way.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com