I?d describe my 21 year-old son as a casual fan, but he?s been going to boxing matches from the time he had to sit in my lap at ringside, so he?s hardly uninitiated.
A few weeks ago we?d just sat down together to watch the Pacquiao-Hatton replay when he hit the ?pause? button just before the opening bell.
?Explain something to me,? he said. ?If they?re introducing one guy as the Number One boxer, pound for pound, in the world, how come they?re introducing the other guy as the champion of the world??
Pretty good and complicated question, that. And the explanation took longer than the fight did.
In a nutshell, I reminded him that at least Jim Lampley had qualified the ?pound for pound? reference by prefacing it with ?mythical? ? though Michael Buffer, in introducing the participants, did not, and in fact made it sound quite official.
The ?titles? being contested that night, I tried to explain, were pretty mythical as well. One of them was from a fly-by-night sanctioning body called the International Boxing Organization, recognized only in certain precincts of South Florida. The other was was sponsored by a boxing magazine which is owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by the co-promoter of the fight we were about to watch.
HBO, I added, is usually a little more circumspect about the way their announcers describe these things, but there?s not much they can do about Buffer, whose introductions are scripted by the promoters.
And now comes the news that HBO has strong-armed Chad Dawson into relinquishing his IBF lightweight title, apparently paving the way for the network to televise a Dawson-Glencoffe Johnson rematch later this summer. It?s going to be interesting to see how HBO handles that one, since The Ring doesn?t recognize Dawson as champion but the IBO does.
You can take it to the bank that Gary Shaw will make sure Buffer introduces Bad Chad as ?the International Boxing Organization light-heavyweight champion of the world,? but will Lampley & Co. describe it as a ?title fight,? or will he explain to viewers that his employers are the reason Dawson is no longer recognized as champion by any credible body?
Look, nobody?s saying here that HBO should have just bit the bullet and televised Dawson vs. Tavoris Cloud (though HBO did exactly that in showing several Roy Jones fights against an equally anonymous collection of mandatories), but if the network is determined to play matchmaker and kingmaker, shouldn?t it publicly acknowledge its role?
To begin with, pound-for-pound lists are like rectums: Everybody has one.
Whose pound-for-pound list the HBO folks were referring to last month they didn?t say, and the supposition here is that many casual viewers of boxing are probably under the impression that (a) there is an official list of the top boxers, pound-for-pound, and (b) that it means something.
It doesn?t. It?s like making a list of the ten prettiest girls in the class, or the ten best rock bands of all time. In the absence of objective criteria, it?s in the eye of the beholder, and while I think almost anyone who keeps one of these things would have Pacquiao?s name on top right now, does anybody really care? Even Manny?
Back in the old days there was no pound-for-pound list. Well, that isn?t entirely accurate. There was one, but it only had one name on it. The term was coined to describe Sugar Ray Robinson and nobody else. Once Sugar Ray retired, or once he had ceased to be the dominant fighter of his age, somebody probably speculated about who his successor might be and made a list of ten possible candidates. Somebody else disagreed and made another list of his own.
Now every magazine and every boxing website and many boxing fans maintain these lists, many of them ranked from 1 through 20. This in turn produces arguments among readers, and sometimes they become quite heated.
That?s fine. It?s fun, and it?s harmless, as long as nobody takes them too seriously. But it doesn?t mean that one man?s (or one magazine?s) P4P list is any more valid than another?s. Or yours.
This obsession over pound-for-pound rankings is precisely why the upcoming Mayweather-Marquez fight strikes us as a flim-flam of the first order. In the absence of any other title, the bout is being flogged on the basis of its importance in the pound-for-pound rankings, although even that is a misrepresentation, since the basis for Marquez? position is as a lightweight.
When another Sugar Ray, this one named Leonard, ended a retirement even longer than Money?s recent hiatus, he surprised many with his insistence on going straight after Marvin Hagler?s middleweight title without a tuneup fight ? even though the new weight class represented uncharted territory.
The same options were available to Mayweather. He could have opted for a tuneup fight or a title fight. If he wanted to fight for a title, Shane Mosley would have been more than happy to accommodate him. But if the opponent was going to be Marquez, well, he has a title, and it is at 135. What we have instead is a glorified tuneup bout Golden Boy is fobbing off on the public as a $50 pay-per-view event ? one whose earth-shattering importance derives solely from its impact on these P4P lists.
Marquez fought exclusively as a featherweight for 13 years. He moved up to 130 two years ago, and has only had two fights at lightweight. Being asked to move up to 143 had already stacked the deck in Mayweather?s favor, and his more recent acquiescence in agreeing to fight at 147 makes no sense at all.
The story of the revised weight limit, by the way, was broken by a Golden Boy subsidiary, Ring?s online website. It?s probably just a coincidence, but did you happen to notice that The Ring presently lists its welterweight title as ?vacant??
# # #
An even more insidious cousin of the ubiquitous pound-for-pound list comes in the form of rankings. Since almost everyone agrees that the rankings of the four recognized sanctioning bodies are often either inaccurate or misguided or corrupt, and sometimes all three, it?s understandable that some might want to compile a what they consider a more accurate ranking of practicing pugilists in each weight division. Fans do it, websites do it, and magazines do it, but there?s only one of them that attempts to pretend that its rankings are the only objective ones in existence, and as far as I know there?s only one of them that awards ?world championship? belts and expects people to take them seriously.
The most troublesome aspect of this practice is that some people do. The makeup of the Ring panel is cloaked in anonymity, but the suspicion here is that the people who attach the most significance to the Ring belts are in many cases the very people who vote for them in the first place.
It?s easy critical of the ridiculous and often nonsensical methods of the recognized sanctioning bodies over. Their ratings are often arbitrary, and their excuses for stripping championships often indefensible and badly in need of reform. This has not escaped the attention of the authorities, by the way. A key provision in the new boxing reform bill introduced by Sen. John McCain this year would make the alphabet groups answerable, by law, for every seemingly precipitate action in this regard.
But in the meantime, it should be obvious that the last thing the boxing needs to eradicate the confusion is a fifth sanctioning body, but that?s exactly what the Ring is trying to be, and people who should know better seem more than willing to encourage them.
The conflict of interest inherent in a publication owned by a major promoter is so evident that it shouldn?t even require mention. And beyond that, given the sordid history of corruption in earlier eras of that publication?s history provide good reason for the present administration?s reluctance to identify its voters, since to do so would on the surface appear an open invitation to bribery.
But we know who?s on the ratings committees of the WBC and the WBA and the IBF and the WBO. If Ring is reluctant to publicly disclose its panel, it does strike me that at the very least a scribe who insists on labeling the magazine?s ratings ?the best,? or ?the most honest,? or ?the most accurate? should also disclose ?Oh, and by the way, I have a vote in these rankings.?
The Ring will try to tell you that they?re honoring a time-honored philosophy and recognizing ?lineal? champions, but that isn?t always true, either. Sometimes they wind up, as they did a few years ago, declaring Vitali Klitschko the heavyweight champion of the whole world at a time when it seemed clear to most that he wasn?t even the best heavyweight in the Ukraine. Sometimes they wind up following the linear breadcrumb trail up a blind alley, and recognizing a Joel Casamayor while ignoring a guy who has three belts hanging in his trophy room.
And sometimes if a championship isn?t readily available, they?ll go out and create their own, which is what happened when Bernard Hopkins fought Winky Wright for what Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer proclaimed ?the Ring Magazine 170-pound championship.?
One more bit of full disclosure here. I have no idea how it operates now, but two decades ago I used to vote on the Ring panel. This would have predated P4P lists and unilaterally-awarded championship belts, and the process was conducted by mail, with paper ballots. Sometimes I?d find myself on the road and miss a deadline. A few other times I just plain forgot to fill it out on time. And on each occasion, when the pertinent issue came out a few months later, I could see exactly how much one missing ballot had skewed the rankings, which if nothing else suggests that this was a pretty small sampling of worldwide experts at work.
The Ring people will try to tell you that their titles can only be lost and won between the ropes. To win a Ring belt a man must supposedly either beat a reigning champion, or win a box-off between the No. 1 and 2 rated fighters to fill a vacant title.
And their titles, they will try to tell you, are vacated only when a boxer (a) retires, (b) loses in the ring, or (c) moves up in weight.
That would all sound reasonable were it remotely true, but in practice it has not been the case. Depending on the promoter or the network showing an attractive fight these guys will hand out a belt faster than you can pin the tail on the donkey. In some instances they?ve been quicker to strip a champion than any alphabet you can name. In others they?ve allowed their belt to languish around a fighter?s waist long beyond any common sense would dictate ? sometimes, it would appear, for no reason other than to thumb their noses at the recognized sanctioning bodies.
Just a few instances, keeping the aforementioned criteria in mind: When Lennox Lewis, who beat Vitali Klitschko in his final fight, retired, the Ring awarded its belt to Vitali. Five years later it?s unclear whether that was for beating Kirk Johnson or Corrie Sanders or Danny Williams, none of whom could remotely have been described as the second-best heavyweight.
The Ring decided Joe Calzaghe was no longer a super-middleweight even before Joe did, vacating the title when he moved up to fight B-Hop ? even though Calzaghe had formally petitioned two sanctioning bodies to remain their 168-pound champion.
And if moving up in weight is supposed to disqualify a champion, how did Ricky Hatton, who did it twice ? to fight first Luis Collazo and then Mayweather ? keep the 140-pound title all those years? And hasn?t Kelly Pavlik fought as many times at super-middle as he has at middleweight over the past 16 months?
Depends on who you are, I guess. The Ring recognized Casamayor, who had beaten Diego Corrales in an over-the-weight match to win the lightweight title, for almost three years, an era in which Nate Campbell owned three belts, Pacquiao, the pound-for-pound champion owned the other, and the Ring ?champion? none. Flying in the face of all logic, even after Casamayor, in one of his rare outings, had been utterly exposed by Jose Armando Santa Cruz, he was still recognized by Ring. Then when Campbell lost his titles on the scale last February, the Ring sanctioned a match between Marquez, who had lost to Pacquiao, and Juan Diaz, who had lost to Campbell. Marquez picked up two vacant titles in the bargain, but neither those nor the Ring belt will be on the line when he faces Mayweather, another defrocked Ring champion, in July.
The Ring didn?t wait three weeks after David Haye had his first heavyweight fight to strip him and award its cruiserweight title to the Thomasz Adamek-Steve Cunningham winner, yet they continue to recognize Israel Vazquez as their 122-pound champion even though he hasn?t fought anybody in the past fifteen months.
Vazquez has been injured, but his prolonged inactivity got him stripped by the WBC. We mention this not to suggest that the Ring should have stripped him too, but merely to point out how inconsistent the magazine is in applying even its own standards. Maybe the Ring ought to designate him its ?champion in recess.?
But suppose Congress passes the new boxing bill and decides that if the Ring, if it?s going to go around handing out belts on television, should be held accountable by the same standards as any other sanctioning body. You don?t think these people are going to have some ?splainin to do?
Vasquez is only one of two current Ring champions who doesn?t own a bona fide belt. The other, curiously, is Pacquiao, who was fighting as a 140-pounder for the first time the night he slaughtered Hatton, and hence came away with only the IBO version to show for it. And an IBO title, believe it or not, is even more ridiculous than the Ring version.
* * *
Headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, the IBO claims to be unique among sanctioning bodies in that it relies on computerized ratings, which it updates and distributes monthly. It boasts of its ?honest ratings, integrity, and truthfulness,? but it has repeatedly demonstrated that should the opportunity for a fast buck present itself, it will happily ignore all three.
Historically the IBO has employed two distinct methods in crowning its champions. The most obvious involves no heavy lifting: the organization simply offers to add its seal of approval to the coattails of a pre-existing championship. A surprising number of prominent boxers have been dazzled by the prospect of adding another meaningless trinket to their collections and taken them up on this offer. Lennox Lewis and Roy Jones used to bring their IBO belts into the ring along with all the others. Wladimir Klitschko still does. This provides the opportunity to get the IBO name mentioned, and a chance for president Ed Levine to get a little television face time, but beyond that it doesn?t make a ripple in the boxing firmament.
But time and again the IBO has demonstrated a willingness to lend its imprimatur, for the price of a modest sanctioning fee, to promoters hoping to boost the allure of an otherwise insignificant event by fobbing it off on the public as a ?world title? fight.
The result is that while the current roster of IBO belt-holders includes Pacquiao, Wladimir Klitschko, and Dawson, it also includes the immortal Daniel Geale of Australia as middleweight ?champion.? Zolile Mbityi of South Africa is the IBO super-flyweight champion, despite the fact that he is rated No. 17 in the world by the IBO?s own computer ? and it?s about to get worse.
In July the IBO will hand its bantamweight ?world championship? belt to the winner of a Johannesburg bout between Simpiwe Vetyka (No. 45 in the IBO rankings) and Eric Barcelona (No. 26). The IBO has also agreed to recognize the winner of an August fight between Grady Brewer (No. 19 on the IBO computer) and a Russian named Zaurbek Baysangurov (No. 21) as its junior middleweight ?world champion.?
We mentioned the seemingly indecent haste with which The Ring abandoned Haye to embrace the Adamek-Cunningham winner as cruiserweight champion. The IBO didn?t even wait that long. In June of 2007, the IBO sanctioned a bout between Adamek (who had just lost to Dawson and was fighting for the first time as a cruiserweight) and Panama?s Luis Andres Pineda as a world title fight.
In the face of this nonsense, you have to wonder how Wladimir Klitschko can even keep a straight face when he walks into the ring with an IBO belt for next month?s fight against Haye in Germany.
And consider for a moment how Dawson wound up an IBO champion:
The IBO light-heavyweight title had been on offer in the 2006 fight between Hopkins and Tarver, whose last win at the time had come against Sylvester Stallone. Hopkins won, but was subsequently stripped by the IBO so it could sanction Tarver vs. Elvir Muriqui (No. 36 on the IBO Hot Hundred) as a ?world title? fight. Tarver won and subsequently defended against Danny Santiago (then rated 43rd by the IBO computer), which is how he came to be in possession of the IBO belt when he fought Dawson the first time.
Chad Dawson is undefeated and it is generally accepted that he is the legitimate 175-pound champion, yet his title is not recognized by the WBA, the WBC, the WBO, the IBF, or by The Ring.
The one title he does have is the IBO?s, and given its dubious provenance, that is the only one of the bunch he probably doesn?t deserve.
