It's not easy being a boxing fan

I was just thinking about the Tom Cruise movie, "Jerry Maguire". Near the beginning he had the sudden urge to write a mission statement about the integrity of being a sports agent and that whatever they did should be for the good of sports. His sincere, heartfelt plea ended up getting him fired. Maybe the moral of doing something for the good of sports is totally pointless because nothing will change while sports agents make so much money. But what has this got to do with boxing? Well, maybe not much, except that Jerry's mission statement recommended less clients and this could apply to boxing - as in less titles and less weight divisions.
Sometimes, I wish I disliked boxing. I wish I didn't care when I watch a mismatch on TV or read about some poor sap being stripped of his alphabet belt. During my lifetime I've witnessed boxing shrink to become a minority sport. Sure, Wladimir Klitschko can draw 50,000 fans to an arena in Germany, but that's not what I'm talking about. I live in the UK and when I first became a boxing fan there were regularly fights on network TV. But that coverage disappeared a long time ago. Now I have to subscribe to Sky TV to watch it. And back in the 1980's boxing got a lot of newpaper coverage in the national dailies. I'm not referring to a couple of paragraphs buried beneath a column about horse racing. I'm talking about big two-page spreads. But that disappeared a long time ago too. Why? It's simple. The general public doesn't give a **** about the fight game.
Back in 1987, a re-run of the Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard superfight was shown at 8PM on ITV on a Tuesday night. Can you believe it? A boxing match being shown at prime time on a network channel???? That would never happen today. Never. And in the issue of the "TV Times" magazine covering the TV schedules for that week there was a full page article on the fight. Boxing in the "TV Times"? It'd be unheard of today.
I can mention Juan Manuel Lopez or Andre Ward to friends or colleagues and they don't have a clue who I'm talking about. Who's the welterweight champion of the world? Who knows? Who cares?
The commentators on Sky TV enjoy telling me who the champs are. They can televise a Vitali Klitschko fight and tell me that he's the world heavyweight champion. And they can televise a David Haye fight and tell me that he's the heavyweight champion too. They don't care. They have no loyalty to anyone. They just want to bill a fight as a title fight and then brainwash us little people into believing it actually means something.
On 21st May they're going to show Nathan Cleverly v Juergen Braehmer which is supposed to be for the "world light heavyweight championship". Says who? Sky TV? The WBO? Who the **** is Braehmer anyway? And who has he ever beaten? Nobody of any note that's for sure! Come to think of it, who has Nathan ever beaten? Don't get me wrong, I like Nathan. I think he's a talented fighter with a lot of potential. But let's get real - he hasn't beaten any genuine world class fighters in their prime. Yet if he beats Braehmer he can place himself alongside the likes of Archie Moore and Bob Foster! What a crock of ****! That's why it's hard being a boxing fan. Boxing is the only sport in which a participant can actually become a world champion without ever having beaten anyone even half-decent.
Younger boxing fans probably don't know any better. They're used to having five or six so-called world champions in each division. They're probably unaware that back in the 1950's there were only 8 divisions with one champion in each.
So many titles, so much **** to wade through. It's hard to find a fight without a title at stake. There's Super Champions, and Champions in Recess, and Silver belts and Diamond belts and international titles. What the **** does it all mean? Where will it end?
Has anyone checked out the WBA's website recently. If you want a laugh read the "WBA Mission" section. What a load of bollocks. And check out their ratings. It makes me want to puke. Just look at middleweight. They've got Felix Sturm as the "super champion". What has he ever done to earn that status? And what does it mean anyway? They've got Gennady Golovkin as the "world champion". Who is this guy? And then they have Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam as the "interim champion". What the ****? Does this guy even exist? The number one contender is Avtandil Khurtsidze. Can this be for real? And which champion is he the number one contender for? The WBA has been in existence since 1962 and they answer to no one. They can carry on with all kinds of crap and no can do anything about it. Why not? Because the people who can do something about it earn too much money from this whole sorry mess.
Consider this; a WBA title fight takes place in South Korea. They have a representative flown in along with their nominated judges. Who pays for their flights and hotel rooms? The promoter, which means the promoter has to add a bit more on to ticket prices or take a bit off their fighter's purses in order to pay for these goons. On top of that the WBA gets their big fat sanctioning fee. Where does this money come from? Same place. So we get a bunch of greedy execs jet-setting around the world at the expense of the fighters and the fans. What does the fighter get out of it? A cheap plastic belt and the right to call himself a "world champion". But wait! Aren't there also four or five other guys who also call themselves the world champion of the same division? Of course but no one gives a **** because they're all making money. TV companies buy these fights and then feed them to us little people as top quality sports action.
The problem is that there are so many titles floating around that there are not enough worthy challengers. Which in turns means that lesser fighters get title shots. Which in turn means more mismatches. The title-holders never have to fight each other and so they milk their alphabet belts for all they're worth against a bunch of softies.
A classic example came earlier this month when Ricky Burns defended his WBO super featherwight title :yep against somebody called Joseph Laryea. This was a challenger who had lost 3 of his previous 7 fights and had not one single noteworthy name in the victory column on his record. Yet the TV "experts" at Sky TV tried to convince us that this was a dangerous test for Burns. Not surprisingly, this pointless mismatch ended after 7 rounds. I'm not singling out Burns but this type of crap gets churned out year after year and no one ever does anything about it.
In the early 1990's I was kind of hopeful that all this alphabet title madness would eventually fizzle out and we could get back to having a proper world champion in each division. But now I know it'll never go away. I wish I was someone famous and then I could appear on national TV and rant and rave against the alphabet groups and maybe have the influence to actually do something about it.
Jeez, I've written a lot here. I don't know if anyone'll still be reading at this point. People can say "oh shut the **** up Young Corbet IV", you don't know what you're talking about or quit moaning cos it is what it is and we all just have to accept it. It's all ****ed up. Shall we sit back and see who Ricky Burns fights next? Or wait to see if Manny and Floyd will ever sign to fight each other? What other sport is there when the best can avoid the best?
Like I said at the top of this load of waffle, I sometimes wish I disliked boxing. But then I watch Andre Ward, or Alexis Arguello, or Willie Pep, or Ezzard Charles, or even just journeymen who put their heart and soul into what they do, and I remember why boxing is so ****ing brilliant. There's nothing like the skill and courage a great fighter shows when they step into the ring. Then it gets spoilt when the IBF strip another title-holder for no apparent reason.
There's a lot of anger vented on some of these boxing forums from fans ripping each other apart cos they think Floyd will beat Manny, or the other way round, or that Floyd would get knocked out by a prime Sugar Ray Leonard or whatever, but wouldn't it be cool if that kind of anger was directed at the alphabet groups by all boxing fans? People can tell me to get a life or go and boil my head or whatever. But I'm not suggesting that we all link arms and sing "We Are The World". I just want to tell Adam Smith of Sky TV at the next pointless mismatch they show that it's not a proper world title fight in the true sense of the term and that they are mugs for buying the rights to show this fight in the first place. And that for the integrity of the sport Sky TV should refuse to televise alphabet fights or at least refuse to acknowledge the ridiculous belt that's at stake. It's our sport dammit and we should be entitled to a proper world champion.
This may be the longest thread in Eastside Boxing history, but I'm just tired of all this ****. I'm tired of the WBC trying to get their middleweight belt wrapped around the waist of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Their bull**** shenanigans have the brilliant Sergio Martinez being "promoted" to "champion emiritus" (as if that means anything) because Chavez would never beat Martinez. The WBC then pass their belt to Sebastian Zbik who's a bit mediocre and Chavez has a much better chance of beating him. Soon, they could be able to call Chavez the "middleweight champion of the world", and who's going to stop them?
:hi:

 

What's the big deal? Haven't you ever read a book?

 

Patronising me, huh? I may be a "newbie" in respect of this forum but I'm not a "newbie" when it comes to being a boxing fan. Do you just tolerate all the bull**** that goes on in boxing? Don't you want to do anything about it?

Sure the thread's long but so what? It's no different to reading an average newspaper article. There's no point dismissing it just because of its length.