I mean can you mention any other sport where the best contenders don't actually have to face eachother? I can't think of any. From chess to K1 the world champion becomes a champion by defeating the other top contestants. It's just in pro boxing when you can claim to be champion by beating bums and not facing any serious opposition. Corrupt promoters choose opponents to their fighters as they will and the sanctioning bodies assist to this. Sometimes one sanctioning body has three champions in one weightclass. Others stirp fighters of thier belts immediatly after unifying with another champ in order to get more fees. I'm sick of this. No wonder boxing lost it's popularity, the whole thing is a mess. We need to get rid of the ABC orgs, have tournaments to decide who the man is, and force the best fighters to face eachother. Discuss.
the reason is simple: pro boxing (at least about 90 percent of it) is more of an exhebition than a competative sport. once you are over that, you´ll be fine.
I thought I was. It's just comes back over and over again. You know, this could be such a great sport. And actually it was. But not anymore.
As unattractive and counterintuative as it sounds for boxing, a tournament format is actually a good idea as long as you spread the tournament over time, so that the quality of boxing doesn't suffer due to frequent fighting fatigue. Say, a tournament that is one year long, would be ideal. In the end, the most successful fighters will face off with one another and a clear unanimous champion will emerge each and every year! As good as such a format would be for the fans, it takes autonomy away from the promoters and belt organizations as they can no longer make decissions on who fights or doesn't fight one another. A tournament only advances a fighter based on merits and results, making the financial considerations of the fight irrelevant. However, in the end, if the fans are satisfied with such a format, the promoters will actually stand to make more profit from ticket sales, PPVs and t.v. deals, because the sport should become more popular. Given the current slump in sales and popularity, they would be wise to try a tournament format for at least a couple of years.
The tournament would be awsome, i think if they only had one belt in each weight class an less weight classes people could notice the champs an even some of the contenders.
Couldn't agree with you more. Given the title of thread, however, I was tempted to say something sarcastic like "when did you figure this out." :lol" But the bottom line is you are right on the money. The short answer involves some kind of U.S. federal boxing commission, which could then join together with similar bodies in other countries to form a true world sanctioning body that would rate fighters and award ONE legitimate title per division. The entry of a federal, and internation, commission into this arena would put those corrupt sanctioning orgs right out of business. Nobody'd pay their fees anymore!!
true enough, without 1 governing body it's basically wide open, all these ABC org's open up then promoters crawl in like insects and even HBO and Showtime has got their hands in the dish controlling fights. Unlike the NFL or any other major sport which has 1 governing body to have rules for everybody to follow, boxing has none of this and every org makes their own rules to suit their specific greed needs. The ranking sytems of these org's should be a good example of the corruption. That's why the UFC has tightened things up the way they have, they don't want promoters controlling their sport. And the reason why HBO and UFC didn't come to an agreement was because HBO wanted to much control like they have of boxing.
This tournament concept would be a great idea, albeit totally financially unfeasible. The top 8 of each division could enter into a randomized competition, face each other in an elimination format, with the winner receiving a trophy; win the tournament five times and you get to keep the trophy for life. The 3 tournament rounds would take place at reasonably regular four month intervals; anyone who can't make a date forfeits (Vitali could never be competitive in this). Suddenly, boxers wouldn't be pumped up on second raters to get a bogus shot at a bogus belt, but rather there would be a clear way of saying "this is the champion". In many ways, the belt format of boxing is outdated: in Sullivan's time, it was a great idea, today it's just a hassle. The only problem is, it wouldn't be profitable for guys like Warren, King, Arum and the like, so it would never happen. However, it's a nice ideal of what boxing COULD be like.
Fedor/Couture is almost the exception in MMA though The only big matchup that needs to be made besides that one is Liddell/Wanderlei Silva, which you could argue is only for entertainment purposes now. It started out as a legitimate unification fight because Liddell had the UFC belt and Silva had the PRIDE belt, but both went out and lost said belts so now it's merely an exciting matchup between two of the sport's premier strikers :good The tournament idea is nice, and it's interesting that that is brought up because both PRIDE (through their GP's) and K-1 (not a big K-1 expert, but isn't the overall format of K-1 a giant tourney that resets every year?) have tournaments like that. Not for the belts, but it is useful to get the "top" 8/16/however many fighters in a division and have them slug it out through the ranks to determine some kind of winner.
BECAUSE PEOPLE ACTUALLY SUPPORT THESE BUMS WHO USE THE BELTS AS LEVERAGE AND CLAIM TO BE CHAMP AT THIS AND THAT DIVISION BY GETTING ONE BELT OFF ONE BUM WHO SHOULDN'T EVEN HAVE THAT BELT. QUIT SUPPORTING THEM. ROY JONES IS A PRIME EXAMPLE. IF YOU LOOK, ALL THESE GUYS DON'T SELL ALOT OF TICKETS BUT THEY ARE ALL OVER RING MAGAZINE AND HBO. THE PUBLIC NEEDS TO CONTROL THE SPORT. WE ARE SO HUNGRY FOR, JUST EVEN FIGHTS, THAT WE WONDER WHY WE EVEN PAID TO SEE THEM AFTER THEY ARE OVER. BOXING WILL BE THERE. ITS OUR JOB TO CALL OUT THE PAPER CHAMPS.
I don't follow MMA at all so I don't know about that one but I like the system of K1. They hold several Grand Prix throughout the year in various countries. In these GPs fighters can qualify to the World Grand Prix held at the end of every year where they have to fight eachother to determine who the best man is.
