By Terence Dooley
In the increasingly litigious world of professional boxing, there are great changes taking place. Valour in the ring is being replaced by vindictiveness out of the ring. You can almost sense the future direction of the sport as it heads towards the courtroom.
In the years to come, Champions will walk to the ring with the usual belt-bearing entourage only they will not be bearing belts, instead they will be waving depositions, demands and contracts; when the fighter finally steps between the ropes he’ll be flanked by lawyers well-prepared for a last minute dash to a court room to argue over the legality of a boxer wearing pink cat-skin gloves.
Press conferences will be no more. Instead the fighters, trainers, managers and promoters will sit in circles and swap stories about how awful their fathers were whilst Oprah Winfrey looks on and weeps.
Promoters will have to take out a whinging license to cover their backs and ensure that they do not get left behind and after each fight they will elbow the fighter aside so they can get their fifteen minutes of airtime, actually that happens now every time a Frank Warren fighter wins we get ten minutes of Frank telling us: “I’ve got a huge fight lined-up for this guy, honest.”
Yes boxing is changing, it is becoming increasingly feminised and I for one blame the blame culture that sees grown men act like spurned women. A case in point is the recent Glenn Close style behaviour of Frank Warren, ditched by Ricky Hatton, Warren has done everything bar boiling his former charges bunny to gain his revenge. It is spreading too as Hatton’s current promoter Dennis Hobson postures and preens telling Warren to come and have a go if he thinks his lawyer is tough enough. Bets have been laid by both the Warren and Hobson camps as to whether their guys, in this case Joe Calzaghe and Clinton Woods, would win a proposed fight, a fight that will seemingly be blocked by the “My wife is the prettiest” quibbling of both camps over cash and who comes to the ring first.
Most damaging to the fans is the fact that in modern boxing a loss is no longer a loss, a contender is no longer a contender and the same roll call of fighters are given endless attempts to win crowns because a loss is only a loss if you don’t have an expert whiner on hand to put forward your claims.
Ever since John Ruiz sued his way into boxing folk-law there has been a growing trend of fighters not having to accept their losses. Ruiz was beaten by Evander Holyfield and stomped his feet, a rematch was ordered and he got a chance to steal a title from an old man. Lord forbid Ruiz should have to box his way back into contention until he is good enough to win a title clearly. Then Ruiz subjected us to a few more of his fights before losing to Roy Jones and whilst many expected him to come out and say: “Yes, I got beaten by a former middleweight, its over for me at heavyweight” he instead opted to blame the referee and then switched the blame onto the outgoing Mrs. Ruiz, looking back maybe we would have gotten more of a fight from Mrs. Ruiz than Johnny, a woman scorned and in need of cash and all that. Ruiz retired and then unretired, perhaps fearful that boxing would not be able to go on without him.
Moving on from that Ruiz ended up with another WBA title and this time lost it to a blown-up former middleweight (again) in James Toney, so he blamed boxing, the judges, the fans and everyone but himself, he then decided to retire (again). We all wept profusely but like a horror movie zombie, only without the footwork and speed of punch, Ruiz returned. This time a positive drugs test managed to put up more of fight against James Toney than Ruiz ever did and John got his title back. His reputation was badly damaged, he was now a laughing stock and there seemed no way back for Ruiz so what did he do? He tried to sue Toney for hitting him repeatedly whilst under the influence of steroids; Ruiz attested that Toney could have hurt him badly due to his drugged-up state. Toney retorted by offering to fight Ruiz again, Ruiz was panicked into responding and he leapt into action by getting his lawyer to write to the WBA asking them to keep Toney the hell away from him. It was touching to see a champion acting with such dignity and inner fortitude.
Fast forward and again Ruiz stepped-up to the (whining) well by taking on a freak show fighter in Valuev who actually turned out to have a few decent skills and promptly beat Ruiz in Germany, off course when Ruiz came out to face the music he blamed Germany itself for his loss. It was nothing to do with his own declining and all ready mediocre skills. Ruiz and his sidekick Norman Stone went to Germany primed for yet another whingeathon and did not let anyone down, aside from themselves.
So why am I being so cruel to Ruiz? Well he moaned the longest and hardest for year after year and it seems this attitude has caught on. The formula is set, fight a tough guy to a close fight and when it is over, and you’ve lost, cry and stamp your feet until the lawyers squeeze out a return match. In fact you no longer need to cry, flying in the face of restriction of trade laws we have the famous rematch clause on hand and waiting to tie up a couple of fighters or an entire division.
We should instead be advocating an earn-a-rematch clause - as in box your way back into contention – because at the moment boxing is at risk of becoming a joke.
Consider that recently Ricky Hatton and Marco Antonio Barrera won via tough, close decisions. In the case of Hatton all three judges returned cards that were marked in his favor yet still it was assumed a rematch was the order of the day, and we the boxing fans are buying into all this! We are beating our feet and demanding that perfectly just wins should necessitate unjust return matches for the losing parties. If they are that good, if they deserved the win that much they will box their way into contention, there are so many titles about that they can become champions boxing their way back into the reckoning. Then, and call me a barking mad visionary, rematches can be ordered down the line when there is more at stake.
There are exceptions of course, Corrales and Castillo rematched because of the high entertainment factor whereas when Jermain Taylor beat Bernard Hopkins did we cry out for a rematch? Or did the churlish, mealy-mouthed, post-fight whining of Hopkins make us think: “Hang on a minute Hopkins has just been robbed here!” and create a demand for a rematch. They say the fight was close and the split-decision would indicate that but did it entertain, did it leave us gasping or did it leave us thinking: “Big deal, Hopkins fought for three rounds, looked awful in losing and made Jermain look awful, a rematch? Sure. Another twelve rounds of tedium followed by Hopkins threatening to retire would go down a storm.” Hopkins lost the first fight on a split decision but the two cards that saw him lose his titles were pretty uniform. All the rematch did was show us what we already knew, that Hopkins could not fight against a speedy fighter.
Sure Hopkins is a great, legendary even, “old-school” fighter but what does this mean exactly? Losing round after round to an overawed novice? Trying to pick up the pace and having three rounds to do so but failing to make a big impression? If your idea of old-school genius is a guy putting his head down and rushing in with a wild right hand before clinching, smothering his own work and smacking a guy on the hips then that is fair enough. If Hopkins is so adept why is his big fight with Tarver being given such a lukewarm reception? Answer: because devoid of his titles Hopkins is pretty much a spoiler who cannot fight for three minutes a round. Against Howard Eastman he looked woeful but was saved by virtue of the fact Eastman was more woeful still. I’m surprised there was not a rematch.
We the fan was then subjected to round after round of Hopkins fiddling with Taylor for a second time, if rematches were awarded for churlish reluctance to concede that you lost fair and square we’d now be preparing for the delights of Taylor-Hopkins III.
So forget immediate rematches, they rarely excite anyway, and lets start making fighters earn title shots by taking contention bouts in the meantime; in other words lets start making our fighters be fighters. Rocky Juarez threw single shots and broke Barrera’s nose but clearly lost the fight, how much of a margin should a margin be? Ditto for Collazo. If either man is as good as they showed in those fights then they’ll be back in contention, if they just got up for a single big fight then we’d feel a bit cheated if we allowed them a second bite of the cherry wouldn’t we?
Let’s ditch the rematch clause, stop the incessant whinging and see if we can inject a bit of masculinity into boxing before the only fights we get to see are Promoter versus Promoter grudge matches with lawyers taking the place of the fighters.
