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Photo © HBO
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Recently coming off the heels of the Arturo Gatti victory over Thomas Damgaard the public has become a jumbled blend of varying support and disapproval in regard to this bout which is habitually the case after a fallen pugilist has tasted the merciless blow of a career impeding defeat prior to a renewal and comeback. There was not to a large extent much of a media buzz prior to the fight, and immediately following the fight the coverage and writing concerning the competition has been anything but prolific or excessive. There have been scarce pieces and postings here and there concerning what transpired and what quite a few persons feel about Arturo Gatti, Thomas Damgaard and a future possible Gatti opponent in current WBC Welterweight Champion and Zab Judah dethroner Carlos Baldomir. Most of the writing has been anything but positive and if you have been around long enough then you know the drill already. Like the old saying goes, “Opinions are like…” Well you get my drift here. Anyway, as much as we as human beings are clearly entitled to our opinions on every topic and subject from sports to religion and everything in between, there seems to be a not to be trusted discrepancy in relation to what is viable opinion in boxing analysis and what usually becomes more of a series of repetitive putdowns and dissections. Writers become “experts”, “experts” become analysts and analysts become judges on high. The pecking order in relation to who thinks who is this or that is becoming more and more of a sickening trend that is eating boxing from the inside like a cancerous tumor it seems and has become a pissing contest to see who can trash each fighter the best. Variety is the spice of life as they say and it is interesting to get different viewpoints on boxers and fights from wide-ranging opinions from all over the world. Yet when do opinions turn into condemnation and muggings rather than conflicting perspectives?
When a boxer defeats another boxer who the community deems as a lesser or unworthy opponent in their regularly biased eyes it establishes a universal opinion early among the populous that the victor was never really that accomplished of a fighter in the first place. Popular belief becomes dependent upon what a select few have to interject about not only the key players in the fight (the fighters themselves) but also if the fight has any meaning whatsoever to the public. This type of tunnel vision and complacency not only makes it tough for a fan to get both sides of the story about a prizefight or its participants, but it leaves them with merely one solitary position on what transpired. If you create a system where there is just one controlling consensus and that is what you must follow in consideration of boxing then you might as well not even bother reading more than one article or piece daily from the same writer. Boxing fans and writers have become highly complacent with the current disorder that boxing finds itself in. On any street corner in any city in the nation after a prizefighter loses a controversial decision or gets robbed in the ring you tend to hear the same defeatist comment from pillar to post, “Oh well, that’s boxing!” That isn’t boxing. That is what the greed mongers and cookie jar stealers have made it to become. That is what negative press has done to our publicity. This very same unforgiving media whose only true ambition it appears as of late is to scorn and knock every boxer that they can, regardless of whether that boxer wins or loses a match. Preferably they would want the fighter to lose so that their articles can be that much more cutthroat. With big losses and crushing defeats come even bigger headlines and even worse assaults. A large majority of our own writers are contributing to the elimination of the number of boxing fans that boxing has. Words have a lot of power and can convey to a listening audience a world of ideas and possibilities. When the words that are sent out over the masses are full of degradation and negativity what do you think that is going to breed in the average fight fan? Will our numbers grow or fall? Only we can determine that outcome through our actions in the future.
Comparisons become another scourge when talking boxing. Let’s take Carlos Baldomir for example, the current WBC Welterweight Champion who defeated Zab Judah recently. Most of the public didn’t put much stock in Baldomir to even show up against Judah but he proved them wrong. Now that Judah lost he slipped even further in the ranks of public judgment only to be additionally ridiculed and picked apart by writers and analysts everywhere, as well as fans who feel he is nothing now because he didn’t live up to “their” expectations, forget about his own. Then a possible suggestion of a face off between Gatti and Baldomir in the future for the WBC trinket becomes thrown around and then Baldomir turns into a slow punching, limited ring movement fighter who just happens to be the current Champion. Stabs are taken excessively at Gatti who is lesser than Judah who got beat by Baldomir who is going to beat Gatti according to the “experts”. Little is weighed in about faith or support of boxers and is more about which fighter slipped in the rankings this week in a system that is not only completely unfair, predisposed and corrupt, but that is also ran by some of the most dishonest and disloyal people you could ever meet. If you don’t think the way the matchmakers set fights up and prevent others from happening, just ask Zahir Raheem why his name wasn’t on the card on January 21, 2006 against Manny Pacquiao instead of Erik Morales? Taking part in one of the biggest upsets of 2005, “King” Zahir dominated the one thought unbeatable Morales in a sensational boxing clinic. This isn’t to say that Manny Pacquiaos devastation of Morales was something to sneeze about because it wasn’t. All this is meant to do is point out a few deficiencies that need to be addresses if boxing is to move forward instead of backwards as it has done for the past couple of years now.
So in retrospect ability truly is a matter of perspective. Ring Magazine may rate one boxer 5 one week and 2 the next. “Experts” (who are a dime a dozen and I have heard even come cheaper than that) will say who they feel sucks this week and doesn’t the next, always searching for that next ride on the ever moving bandwagon of idiocy and to take as many passengers as they can drag down into the mud with them. Alphabet organizations will recognize each of their individually distinguished champions while ignoring the others (unless of course you’re talking unification then there’s money to be made). Boxing has always been a business first and foremost however, with the fighter being at the low end of the totem pole. For the rest of us who still think of it as an art, only the “Sweetest” of sciences, then there is still of course hope for us select few. As long as we can maintain a level of honesty and heartfelt respect for the discipline which has inspired us all in some form or other then that is all we need to continue on successfully. All the negativity and bad press will roll off our shoulders and what matters above all else (the fighters and what they do) will move to the forefront of things and push aside all the rest of the debris that has no place in boxing. That day will come and when it does would you rather be standing alongside those who support boxing or those who destroy it? Lace up your gloves; it’s time for you to make a decision.
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© Copyright / All Rights reserved: Doghouse Boxing 1998-2006
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By Jason Petock (February 1, 2006)
