“Fighting Words” – Ask Not What Boxing Can Do For You

By David P. Greisman

Ask not what boxing can do for you. Because it won’t.

Why would it? Boxing is a business. The top priority is the bottom line.

“I know what people want, and they can go f*** themselves,” promoter Bob Arum was quoted as saying after a January doubleheader on which Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa both came out victorious. What people wanted, of course, was to see Lopez and Gamboa face each other sooner rather than later. Arum wants to make people wait.

In this case, Arum is right. Delaying Lopez-Gamboa is the best choice, not just for sales, but also for suspense. Promoters do so much less actual promoting these days, getting subsidized by networks and casinos instead of figuring out how to sell a fight to the fans. More will watch Lopez-Gamboa if it is built up over time instead of rushed before it ripens.

It’s rare that anyone from within the boxing industry thinks about the good of the many rather than the good of the few. It’s the exception. Whether it is the networks, the promoters (including Arum), or the athletic commissions, the prevailing attitude tends to be “Take it our leave it.”

Take three nights of boxing scheduled on HBO for the first three months of 2010.

Take three pay-per-views scheduled for the first half of 2010 that will either be broadcast or distributed by HBO – Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey, Bernard Hopkins vs. Roy Jones Jr., and Shane Mosley vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. – when in 2009 HBO finally seemed to grasp the idea, broadcasting three pay-per-views and distributing one other.

Take poor undercards either lacking in star power or lacking in competitive action, devoid of emotional investment in the voices of the broadcast commentators and devoid of noise from the sparse arena crowds. The overall product suffers, but the only thing that matters is the main event. Undercards don’t contribute to sales; they only diminish profits.

Take promoters and networks either failing or refusing to harness the Internet for the benefit of the fans and, through that, the benefit of themselves. The UFC sells past fights on its Web site. Television channels have used Web sites such as Hulu to provide another outlet for people to view their programming, and the online advertising provides supplemental income. If Showtime could get a handle on all the various parties’ rights to their broadcasts so past bouts can be shown on ESPN Classic, then why can’t HBO wrangle all the selfish parties together to get the Gatti-Ward trilogy put on DVD? Illicit vendors have found a market for past fights on DVD. The demand is there.

Take the number of sanctioning bodies watering down the competition to the point that the best boxers rarely face the best boxers. This will never change – even if one sanctioning body were to go out of business, it’s easy to imagine it being bought out by another sanctioning body and kept afloat just to bring in the additional sanctioning fees.

Take promoters refusing to do business with other promoters, other managers or other fighters because of grudges, greed, or a combination of each.

Take the biggest fights being inaccessible to regular fans. Take exorbitant ticket prices. Take most tickets going to high rollers, sponsors, and brokers who buy and then scalp.

Take the lack of stars being local attractions first. Take the fighters to Las Vegas instead. No wonder so many fighters complain about being avoided – they’ve not been promoted enough to bring any money to the table without relying on someone else to finance the match, and so there is little incentive to face them. They become high risk, low reward. Take Chad Dawson, for example. He came of age in a light heavyweight division with Antonio Tarver, Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones Jr. and Joe Calzaghe. Only Tarver faced Dawson, and only after Showtime (and then HBO) came up with the money. Their two bouts had a combined attendance of 2,337.

Take promoters taking advantage of television license fees and putting on putrid cards. It has happened on ESPN2. It has happened on Versus. It has happened on Fox Sports Net. It has happened on HBO. And it has happened on Showtime.

Take bad decisions and talk of corruption or incompetence. Take talk of reform with a grain of salt. It doesn’t matter that credibility is lost and fans lose confidence. Athletic commissions get their money from the promoters bringing cards to their states. So long as the promoters earn money, so do the commissions. There is no obligation to the paying customer.

And that is because we do take it instead of leaving it.

Boxing is a niche sport. The casual fans occasionally pay attention and occasionally pay for fights. But the rest of us are the hardcore, those so hungry for boxing that we are willing to subscribe to HBO and Showtime just for the boxing, willing to buy the pay-per-views no matter how many there are and no matter how bad the undercard, willing to dole out the dollars for the excitement of being at an event, willing to return again and again no matter how many times the bad decisions and other disappointments break out hearts.

We don’t speak with our wallets. We do what we do because we enjoy the sport, and because the boxers deserve every dollar, every moment of attention. Floyd Mayweather Jr. earning eight figures for less than an hour of action is more palatable than Alex Rodriguez earning more than $170,000 per game, more than $40,000 per at-bat.

Sports arenas and concert venues can sell $5 hot dogs and $8 beers because we will pay for them. Movie theaters will charge $10 for tickets and $7 for popcorn because we will pay for them. Those in the boxing business will not do anything for the boxing fans unless their bottom line is threatened.

Ask not, then, what boxing can do for you. Ask what you are willing to put up with for the boxers.

The 10 Count

1.  Not a bad pair of consolation prizes after the falling out of a Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. super fight – Pacquiao faces Joshua Clottey on March 13, Mayweather will meet Shane Mosley on May 1.

Would we have preferred Pacquiao-Mayweather? Of course. It would have put two of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the same ring. But Clottey is one of the top welterweights around, even if he is, to steal an idiom, the bridesmaid and never the bride. A Pacquiao victory against Clottey is no given.

Would we have preferred to see Mosley-Mayweather 10 years ago, or even five years ago? Of course. Would we have preferred to see Mosley-Mayweather at a time when Mosley wasn’t 38 years old and coming off a 15-month layoff? Again, of course. But Mosley belongs atop the welterweight rankings.

We were hyped for a possible Mosley-Mayweather bout after Mosley confronted Mayweather in the ring in September following Mayweather’s win over Juan Manuel Marquez. In this instance, “better late than never” still applies – which is far more than we can say about the rematch between Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins.

2.  Poor Paul Williams.

3.  No offense to Chris Avalos or Archie Ray Marquez, but the highlight of last week’s broadcast of “ShoBox: The New Generation” on Showtime was seeing the return of Nick Charles as the broadcast’s blow-by-blow man.

Last year, Charles was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer. He took a leave of absence in August. Five-and-a-half months later, there he was back on the air.

Yes, he looked like a man who had gone through enough chemotherapy to make such advanced cancer mostly go into remission. But he sounded like a man energized by, well, being able to return to what he loves after having such advanced cancer mostly go into remission.

He had been dealt a bad hand. He kept a strong, positive attitude, though, and came out a winner.

4.  Sadly, the news is nowhere near as good for Genaro Hernandez, the former 130-pound champion, now a 43-year-old occasional color commentator.

Last year, we’d heard that his connective tissue cancer had gone into remission. But last week he told Michele Chong of MyBoxingFans.com that “The cancer is back.”

“They found three new cells of cancer,” Hernandez was quoted as saying. “Two are in my left pelvis hip bone and one is in my fifth vertebrae of my spinal cord. I was hit with cancer again; the doctor said anything I have now is Stage 4.”

Hernandez will return to treatment.

5.  Oy-inducing news of the week: Erik Morales is coming back.

Sigh.

Morales will face former lightweight titlist Jose Alfaro in March in Mexico.

Morales, now 33, last fought in August 2007, losing a 12-round decision to David Diaz. It was his fourth loss in a row and his fifth defeat in six fights.

One report has Morales and Alfaro meeting at a 142-pound catch-weight, which, judging by pictures, could still be hard for Morales.

He’s still slimmer than Ricky Hatton. That’s not saying much.

6.  Morales signed a six-fight deal with Mexico-based promoter Nacho Huizar, according to ESPN.com scribe Dan Rafael. That’s far more realistic than the deal Marco Antonio Barrera struck with Don King, which was a five-year contract.

Barrera has fought three times since signing with King: November 2008, January 2009 and March 2009. He hasn’t fought since losing to Amir Khan, and has nothing else scheduled.

Sadly, Barrera-Morales 4 wouldn’t come as a surprise. Not sure which bout sounds more cringe-inducing for those of us concerned about fighters who’ve taken too many shots – Barrera-Morales 4, or Vazquez-Marquez 4.

7.  These unnecessary comebacks do nothing to enhance fighters’ legacies. In fact, these unnecessary comebacks often only serve to delay the official recognition of great fighters’ legacies – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Not that we need to see a fighter inducted into Canastota to know that they were great. But it’s ridiculous that, for example, Thomas Hearns will be eligible for induction at the 2012 ceremony, nearly 31 years after he first faced Sugar Ray Leonard, and a good 20 years after he had his last fight of note, a split decision loss to Iran Barkley in a light heavyweight title fight.

Hearns’ last fight came in February 2006. Should he stay out of the ring (that’s never a given), he’ll be on the ballots sent to boxing writers in late 2011 for induction the following year.

Julio Cesar Chavez will be eligible for induction at the 2011 ceremony, some 11 years after his last fight of note, a stoppage loss to Kostya Tszyu. Also eligible for that induction that year will be Kostya Tszyu and Mike Tyson.

Felix Trinidad will be eligible for induction at the 2014 ceremony, some 12 years after his first retirement, some nine years after his second retirement, and six years after he came back again and lost to Roy Jones Jr. Also eligible for induction that year will be Joe Calzaghe and Oscar De La Hoya.

Erik Morales would’ve been the cream of the crop on the ballot for the 2013 ceremony. If Hall of Fame voters went for sentimental favorites, he could’ve shared the ceremony with posthumous inductions for fellow warriors Diego Corrales and Arturo Gatti.

8.  There were too many boxers behaving badly this week to fit them in here, especially with all the other news worth noting. So if you need your fix of pugs in cuffs, click here for an edition of “The 10 (More) Count .”

9.  Great moments in live television: This exchange came on last week’s episode of ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights,” as blow-by-blow man Joe Tessitore talked to trainer Peter Manfredo Sr. mid-fight.

The context: Manfredo Sr. was in Reno, Nev., working the corner of Jesse Brinkley. Thousands of miles away that same night, Manfredo’s son, Peter Manfredo Jr., was fighting in Connecticut.

Tessitore’s question: “What kind of a night has it been for you, your son fighting back in Connecticut, your fighter fighting here in the fight of his career?”

Manfredo’s response: “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Joe – I don’t know what to say – I puked three times today, and I had diarrhea all day.”

10.  Gotta give it to Manfredo Sr. – he speaks from his gut.

I know, I know…

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com