"WHEN THERE’S A BUCK TO BE MADE, principles become expendable, for this is the most pragmatic of all possible worlds. It may well be the only world, in fact, with prospects of having three world heavyweight boxing champions (four, if you count Monte Masters of Pat O’Grady’s World Athletic Association, which is like believing in Santa Claus because you’re his son-in- law). I do not applaud Larry Holmes, nor condemn him, for doing what is best for Larry Holmes, even if it goes against one of the worthiest principles of the World Boxing Council constitution: Champions should and must defend their titles against the best challengers. Holmes instead told the WBC to take back its $1.99 belt. He will not defend it against the mandatory challenger, Greg Page, for the starvation wage of $2.5 million. At the age of 34, Larry has grown wise to the fact that $8 million buys more groceries than $2.5 million and is opting to arrange a bout against Gerrie Coetzee, the heavyweight champion of the world according to barf (also known as the World Boxing Association). So when a new WBC champion emerges from a bout between Page and Tim Witherspoon, then there will be three, Holmes having picked up the unnecessary sanctity of the International Boxing Federation. There is a curious irony to the end of Holmes’s 5.5-year reign with the WBC. He became champion through another of that organization’s worthy principles: There should be no immediate rematches in title fights so that Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson can stop knocking each other down. Back in 1978, affronted when Leon Spinks gave Muhammad Ali a rematch, the WBC stripped Mr. Spinks of the title and gave it to Ken Norton, who in turn had it taken away by Mr. Holmes. WBC rules, principled though they might be, remind me of the Soviet constitution. It’s a hell of a book, but you don’t want to see the movie because it only works on paper. WBC principles, apply, apparently, only when they are in Don King’s interest. Jose Sulaiman guards the WBC rules with the fervor of Alfonso Bedoya, playing another Mexican bandito in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,” telling Bogart and friends, “Badge? Badge? I don’ gotta show you no lousy badge.” In 1978, Sulaiman acted according to his principles and took a title away from Spinks, who was controlled by King’s good friend, Bob Arum, and gave it to Norton, who was controlled by King. Norton’s first defense, would you believe, was against the winner of a fight between Holmes and Earnie Shavers, both of whom were controlled by guess who. But, of course, only the principle of not allowing immediate rematches was involved. This worthy principle did not apply when Sugar Ray Leonard lost the WBC welterweight title to Roberto Duran. Leonard was given an immediate rematch “for the good of boxing,” Sulaiman said (that King controlled Duran, who was to earn his biggest payday, was merely a coincidence). Last year, Sulaiman stripped Bobby Chacon of the WBC 130-pound title for fighting the WBC’s number one contender, Cornelius Boza-Edwards, instead of Hector Camacho, who happened to be under King’s promotional aegis. Sulaiman, of course, said Chacon was stripped for principles, as when a promoter (King, with options on Chacon) has certain rights. That King had nothing to do with Chacon’s career and obtained those option only by giving Chacon a title shot against Bazooka Limon, does not matter, even if King’s contract with three options, instead of one, was against the WBC’s own rules. Principles, Sulaiman insisted. Holmes, who purportedly had only a seventh-grade education, was meanwhile learning an even more basic principle: promoters must make more money than fighters do. Larry then decided he could be a promoter, too, before “selling out” his promotional rights to a Coetzee bout (we won’t go into some delicious speculation about conflict of interest since we’re sure that promoter Holmes would not have given one of his fighters a smaller dressing room than the others, nor would he have demanded options on, Coetzee in case of an upset). Holmes merely was trying to adopt the “Trainer Plan”, so successfully used by Mike Trainer, Leonard’s lawyer. It is Trainer’s belief, principled or not, that Leonard is the attraction who draws $50 million grosses, not King, not Arum, not even Butch Lewis. Thus, Trainer picks the opponent, strikes a deal, then “hires” a promoter for what amounts to a salary plus bonus. This naturally goes against the principles of most promoters, especially the ones not chosen by Trainer. “I been knowing how the world turns,” Holmes said when he began lashing out against promoters in general. Russell Peltz, a paranoid of virtue, took offense to some of the remarks by Holmes and Alexis Arguello about blood-thirsty promoters. Peltz wondered how promoter Holmes would react when a manager of one of his preliminary fighters called in a last- minute sickness or why Larry didn’t promote his four-round fights at the Scranton CYC years ago. But Larry would not be dissuaded from his belief that risky though the promotion game might be, it was still somewhat safer than the fighting end of the business. “What happened to Deuk-Koo Kim?” Holmes asked. “He can’t fight no more. He’s dead. Or that kid (Kiko Bejines) who died in that fight King promoted. He can’t fight no more. Or Sugar Ray Seales with his eyes punched out. He can’t fight no more.” Most fighters can not follow the trail blazed by Leonard and now deepened by Holmes. Most fighters have to live with the principles of the WBA, the WBC and now the IBF (initials, incidentally, used first by Harry’s New York Bar in Paris for its International Bar Fly club, but appropriate for boxing, as well). Luckily, these are the same men of high principle who make mockery of their own rules and travesties of their ratings. For it is no good to protect the public from champions hiding their crowns from deserving challengers when the challengers forced upon the champions are merely friends of the men with the high principle. Greg Page, of course, is a deserving challenger, even though he has friends of principle. But business is business and the world is not lining up to buy $500 ringside tickets to see him fight, and very possibly beat, Larry Holmes. Not yet. The world, being what worlds usually are, seems more interested now in watching Holmes fight Gerrie Coetzee (although not to the tune of $25-$30 million for Mr. Holmes, who will learn that promoting is not as easy as it seems). All right, then. Let Holmes fight Coetzee. So what if that reduces the population of world heavyweight champions back to two (again, not counting the man who married Sweet Rosie O’Grady). Any world that can go on without Howard Cosell at ringside is tough enough to survive." The article by Michael Katz from March 1984 issue of The Ring Magazine.
