Boxing Once Again Shoots Its Self in the Ass! Fans Stand Up…

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By Dave “Madcap” Mroczek

Everything that can be going wrong, is going wrong, fight fans. The ink is hardly dry on the press and already the boxing world is erupting in chants of “DUCK! DUCK! DUCK!” Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has vacated his WBC trinket so he can apparently continue to negotiate a fight with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Fat chance! The WBC was trying to force a purse bid, but the Canelo team wants no part of that. Once again, the paying public get shafted in another matchup that can only truly be believed if the two men are in the ring and the bell sounds. We have the two best middleweights in the world, in their prime, and chances of that fight happening in the foreseeable future is slim to none, despite what Canelo has to say.

For Shame! After all the big talk surrounding the Mayweather, JR. Vs Pacquiao contest that everyone can work together, and make the big fights, blah blah blah, we end up getting more of the same old nonsense. Independent boxing promotions so desperate to cling to their few remaining cash cows, they refuse to make the biggest matchups that fans want to see. These hapless promoters can’t see the forest through the trees. By choosing to make a few more short term dollars and protecting their star athletes delicate egos, they are damaging the sport as a whole. There may not be much of a future for boxing if this keeps up. Fans, with me in the mix, are sick of this song and dance. You can’t blame people for being disgusted with this sort of thing.

I have long held a belief that for all the potential boxing has, for all the great qualities it possesses like the purity of the competition, the action of a live contest, the incredible displays of heart and courage, and the anticipation of a major event, the boxing public only ever gets one third of the potential that is there for all to see. There are so many situations where a weight division is dominated by two elite fighters, yet in this current era we have only seen one such fight come to fruition, and even that was a washed up shell of what the fight may have been years earlier.

For all the excuses that are made, “the money wasn’t right”, “boxing is a business” and so on, the fact no one seems to be mentioning is that these are the biggest and richest fights possible that are not being made. Instead of making the biggest money and growing the business of boxing as a whole, these narrow minded promoters are making smaller, more secure, and more insignificant fights and are actually damaging their own ability to make even more money in the future by shrinking the sport.
Fans will remember the gamesmanship that has gone on surrounding Sergey Kovalev facing Adonis Stevenson. There is a fight that could have been massive if made years ago but has now deteriorated to the point that no one really even cares anymore. People are sick of talking about it for years, ad nauseum, and getting nothing. Adonis Stevenson is looking old and has faded into obscurity. Kovalev has remained a draw but has been fighting smaller and smaller fights since his big time debut versus Bernard Hopkins. He has a major fight against Andre Ward lined up, but even this will not build the type of excitement and money that Kovalev Vs Stevenson could have at its peak.

More recently, a huge fight pitting Nicholas Walters against Vasyl Lomachenko was all but made, but dissolved because “the money wasn’t right”. Both men will likely now face easily beatable opponents, for much smaller paydays. The great potential has once again been squandered, and if this fight ever does end up made, it surely will be beyond its best before date.

Just one week ago I sat with glee, and typed an article about three great heavyweight matchups that were occurring on May 21st. It seemed too good to be true. It was. This is the one-third theory in action. Already one fight has been cancelled due to a positive drug test, and another has gone from a great gut check to a certain blowout with a last minute opponent change. We still have one of three big matchups remaining, Joseph Parker Vs Carlos Takam. If the hardcore fans can’t stomach this kind of thing how can we possibly attract new fans?

We as boxing fans need to intervene somehow and get this situation under control. We as fans are the ones paying for all this with our pay per view and ticket money. We as fans control who gets rich and who doesn’t, who gets respect and who doesn’t. We hold a lot of power that we are not exercising. This is supposed to be a great sporting contest, we have all the charismatic personalities to make the big fights, but they don’t make them. The fights that do get made are starting to be marred by doping, mismatch and injury too often for comfort. For now, we as fans will continue to enjoy the one third of scraps that remain.

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