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Vinny’s Views: Boxing’s Ten Biggest Ills – A Biting Commentary!

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Mancini Vs KimBy Vinny “Glory Days” Lucci

As a boxing scribe there are as many reasons why I love the sport I cover as there are boxers, but in paying homage to the art of pugilism boxing writers have been pointing out the ills of the game for as long as we have been playing by the Marquess of Queensbury Rules. So shooting from the hip allow me to exploit the grievances of most fans and some of the thorns that have literally been annoying me for decades already.

First up, I put the most controversial flag up on display, “Twelve Round Championship bouts.” Boxer’s safety we were told way back in 1982. Spit bucket! We lost the long time honored tradition of roughly sixty years as a mere ploy to cover up a fighter’s death who was served up in combat as a sacrificial lamb. Unbeknown to all the players involved, was that the Duk Koo Kim tragedy would not simply play itself out as a loss on the talented lightweight champion Ray Mancini’s ledger. The WBA mandated this poor kid the mandatory number one contender for Ray’s crown, even though he had never faced a single top ten contender and fought out of his native Korea only once.

His very unremarkable record was 17-1-1 wasn’t even worthy of breaking into a top twelve tier, let alone challenge the little wrecking ball from Youngstown Ohio. What the boxing organization didn’t count on, was that this fighter’s heart was as big as Mancini’s as well as his will to win. The kid put up a remarkable fight but as each round wore on he was taking more of a beating as each minute passed. Ray never backed down from a challenge and Kim gave every ounce of his soul that night that night to lift the crown.

In the opening minute of the fourteenth round, Ray dropped his challenger who somehow rose like a deer in headlights when referee Richard Green had seen enough and stopped the fight. Moments later the brave warrior slipped into a coma and succumbed to his head injury and died four days later. This complete story will be revisited here in completion on a later date exploring the aftermath that directly affected all the participants involved. The fallout for boxing fans however, was a reduced time limit of 15 rounds to 12.

Twelve if you remember, were often the stanzas given to “state” championships or a spring board for two top contenders to get into position for a real championship fight. Five years ago, I polled fifty boxers on their views of three extra rounds being reinstated and it was no surprise that forty-nine were dead set against it. Of the fifty, only two actually fought in that fifteen round era, with one supporting it and one against. OK, I get it. It’s not me getting hammered and todays fighter’s don’t want to take on any more risk than they have to and who could blame them? Not I, but at the same token don’t let these cowboys dare ever brag that they are the greatest of all times or some imaginary pound for pound king. Here is the hard cold sobering fact whether or not you agree. You can’t compare today’s best champions or their records against those of the time honored Golden Era. If you never trained to do battle for fifteen rounds, let alone actually fought those extra nine minutes how can you compare yourself with those champions and contenders who had no choice?

What got Kim killed was bad politics and unfortunately Ray was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kim having never fought in America or his way up the contender rankings was horribly ill prepared to get into a ring for fifteen rounds. While this glorified novice made his name from infamy, there was a loaded stockpile of high caliber names bloating the lightweight ranks and truly worthy of title shot.

When fans discuss the good old days, you can draw a parallel line to everything that went wrong with boxing alongside this event. If sanctioning bodies were held accountable for their rankings we wouldn’t be force fed bad matches, padded records or bear witness to tragedies in the making. Bring back the fifteen rounder and let a boxer develop, mature, and earn his ranking through attrition and skill. All other sports have some sort of qualifying runs to get into position for the top slot at glory. The fact that boxing can be manipulated without set standards is another reason it keeps shooting itself in the foot with no International Federation to oversee mandated rules applied and enforced.

Which brings me to Pay –Per- View and its lack of quality matches. Think about it for a minute. How many times did you double your monthly cable bill because you ordered a fight and were terribly disappointed at the results wondering aloud why it wasn’t simply broadcast on its cable host instead?

Leading directly into problem number three, PPV undercards! What the hell ever happened to putting on a show? God how I miss the Don King productions where you often got two title fights underneath a Tyson fight, making the night an extravaganza for purists of fistic appreciation. Often there would be a warm up bout between two very memorable heavyweights who were past their prime but entertaining nonetheless. Today if you’re not interested in unknown kids coming up from obscurity, then you’re not likely to appreciate the “fillers” with no name recognition.
Add the Alphabets to the mix and now you truly have a watered down product. Four title belts out there, four champions in each division. Please remind me again why we should be buying these fights?

Follow up this logic with all the cherry picking these champs do and you want to scream knowing the huge numbers some turn down when faced with a legit challenge. Man I could go rocket right here, but again this will be re-explored in a future column naming names. Compound this prima donna attitude with the new disease called “catch weights.” While it’s fun watching two champs agree on a neutral ground to get a fight made its absolutely sickening to see a belt holder refuse to allow his challengers enter ring at that belts weight limit.

These fighters should be dropping hammers, not belts! As I stated previously, these problems all flow into one another. With multiple belts on the market, not only don’t you have to defend against the best contenders ranked by a rival organization, but today fighters are dropping their titles in avoidance of public demand for unifications. Come on sports fans, you can fill in the blanks on your own and know every fighter I’m talking about without hesitation or speculation.

So boxing’s popularity has waned and the fall out effect was free broadcast television was cancelled for decades, citing that sponsors lost interest in the sport as well. While there has been a recent foray back from obscurity outside cable, it was short lived and future plans to continue it have been terminated already.

This absence has lead for most daily newspaper coverage to dry up quicker than the ink on the paper it’s printed on. Whatever happened to the glory days of “hold the presses” waiting for a lead back page story for morning edition? Today you’re lucky if a major fight gets covered at all.

So in this pathetic mosaic of orchestrated madness most boxing magazines have tanked, with the survivors charging 9 bucks a pop. With the internet supplying free competition with daily updates, not monthly you’d think they’d lower their prices in hopes of reclaiming lost subscribers.

With all this to digest, give yourselves a round of applause. You the fans have accepted the gauntlet which has been narrowed down to a mere fraction of the regal days of yesteryear and still support your heroes which helps those becoming icons and legends.

Finally bringing us to so many skyrocketing egos that simply have done little to earn the accolades we have prematurely adorned them with. Boxers need to make as much money as possible in a short amount of time and hopefully set themselves up with a future retirement package that not only enables them to stay retired, but comfortable and free of debt as well.

It’s terribly sad seeing a retired fighter having to once again engage in battle simply to pay the rent. In recent months several fighters have made such outlandish demands that promoters, sanctioning bodies, networks, and rival champions have had no other choice but to balked at. This behavior has me scratching my head in disbelief knowing all too well every boxer is in a secret fight with “Father Time”. In some cases, the fans need to wise up and not turn an unaccomplished fighter into a folklore hero simply because he has swagger and star appeal. These fighters want your PPV dollar and don’t care if you’re bored stiff watching them earn it. It’s truly time we all asked a little more out of boxing with the expectations of actually getting it.

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