Holding

I actually agree. It would take some adjusting, but eliminating holding would make for a far more enjoyable and fan-friendly product.

 

Sounds like amateur/Olympic style boxing is more your brand pal

 

Not in this thread no

 

Because I like professional prize fighting ?

They already deduct points for excessive holding. If you remove clinching entirely the sport would have very little in common with the sport I've been following closely for the past 30 years. If you want to see head hunting / punch counting then the amateur scene already has everything you want

 

So your tactic is to post how you think things should be, say you want a discussion and then say anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

Excessive holding is against the rules. I’m sorry they didn’t consult you to decide how much is too much. I wish the powers that govern everything would defer to my point of view, too, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.

You’ve been given an alternative of boxing that is officiated the way you say you want it — amateur boxing — and dismiss it. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s professional prizefighting and sometimes things happen in fights.

 

Does anyone think the sport of boxing would actually be worse with far less holding? Or just different?

 

To be fair it’s kind of like soccer/football. grabbing hold of a player should technically be an infringement of the rules, but it’s a contract sport, has always been a part of it and it’s impossible to draw a line of what is acceptable and what isn’t and has to be taken on a case by case basis. I understand your train of thought though.

 

Allowing hitting while holding would be a good alternative. A bit more violence for the violent guys and nostalgia for the relics

 

I think it would be unwatchable if you had the ref step in and take points and DQ on non-excessive holding. Literally every clinch would be a warning, then a point deduction, then a DQ.

The fact is, boxers will always end up in awkward positions as they engage, or try to, which will force a clinch. That doesn’t make it a foul.

I don’t tune in boxing to watch referees. I tune in to watch a fight.

If you come up with a way that boxers are going to fight how you want them to fight by waving a magic wand instead of by over-officious refereeing, sure, whatever. But that’s wishful thinking.

Football would be better if no linemen ever held. Football would not be better if we had a holding call on every play, which could happen if the refs wanted to nit-pick interior line play on every snap.

You would also take away a lot of skill: how many times have you seen someone in a corner grab the opponent’s elbow and spin himself out and put the other guy into the corner. Your way would result in a warning and if it was the second or third time a point deduction ... no thanks.

I want professional prizefighting, not rock-em sock-em robots. That involves non-punching contact at the highest levels and it’s amazing to behold someone who knows how to do these thing well.

There’s also a huge element of fans who would be shocked to see a good referee warning/taking points away from the guy who initiated the clinch when in their minds the other guy was at fault. I think Klitschko-Povetkin is Exhibit A on people saying one guy was holding when the other was initiating nearly every clinch:

Povetkin steps in and when he gets close he immediately thrusts one or both arms out under the armpit(s) of Klitschko. The only way to avoid a clinch when this happens is to have Wlad raise his hands like he’s surrendering. Look how often Povetkin gets inside the reach, in prime punching position, and hooks Klitschko around the waist with his left hand. THAT is the clinch being initiated in either case.

Look at the same fight and Povetkin’s other tactic is to put his head under Wlad’s armpit, to the side of his torso. Now explain to me how Klitschko is supposed to avoid a clinch here? By raising his arm and exposing his body and taking himself out of punching position? That’s not his job. The shorter man in nearly every case in this fight is the one who initiates the clinch, and if he had bee docked points or DQ’d people would have went nuts.

If you want to watch a form of boxing where refs step in every 8 seconds to stop the action and warn someone, that’s not for me. And it would be awful to watch for almost everyone. But if you like that, as mentioned on this thread, amateur boxing has a ton of that sort of thing so there is a form of the sport that is officiated much more like the way you say your want it, so I’d suggest anyone who says they want that to embrace amateur boxing.