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This past weekend my uncle, who we’ll call Billy, went to his local chicken wing joint to watch the fight between Floyd Mayweather and Zab Judah. Normally, Billy doesn’t go out of his way to watch boxing, but since I introduced him to Arturo Gatti’s fights with Micky Ward he’s expressed a little more interest in it. So, Saturday night came and, egged on from friends at work, he decided to check out what all the fuss was. After all, there was no cover charge, and as he told me later “All I did was invest in 4 beers.”
The first mistake that the new or casual fan makes is not realizing that while the fight they are watching is being called a championship fight, it is hardly that. Then the question comes “How come they call it a championship fight then?”
“Well, that’s because, while Zab Judah lost his last fight, his opponent Carlos Baldomir didn’t pay the sanctioning for one of the titles so Judah got to keep it.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” was his reply (some language has been changed; after all, this is a family website).
That must be the oddest thing for someone, who is trying to give boxing a chance, to take in. I mean, if you’re reading this you are probably used to it, but just think about when you first became a fan, that took some getting used to. Luckily though, we have some outlets that give us correct rankings, namely ‘The Ring’ magazine, which I explained to him.
Since I couldn’t watch the fight because I was in Baltimore watching the Orioles get their butts kicked while I froze mine off, I waited for his call to tell me how the fight ended. The first thing he spoke about was the 10th round and how it’s all too much like the WWE. I tried to explain to him that there are thousands of fights a year where nothing even remotely close to that happens. It’s hard to not disagree with him though, especially if you know about boxing from what you see on Sports Center or read in Sports Illustrated. While a wild melee is newsworthy material they fail to even mention the many soft spots in boxing such as Emmanuel Augustus refusing to hit Ray Oliveria after it appeared Oliveria had suffered some sort of head or neck injury. Or what about Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti hugging in the middle of the ring after their third and final fight which gave us 30 of the most brutal rounds in boxing history. Anyway, there isn’t much you can do about those outlets bringing negative press to boxing. You just have to do your best to ignore it and do your part to hope it goes away.
These are just a few things people new to boxing must overcome if they want to continue their quest for being a ‘true’ boxing fan. I don’t know if we’ve locked up Billy yet into our world, but if he can get by some of the sillier aspects of the game then hopefully we’ll have a new member. |
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© Copyright / All Rights reserved: Doghouse Boxing 1998-2006
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By Bobby Jones (April 14, 2006)
