THE BOXING COMEBACK IN HINDSIGHT
Cambridge, MA- What a difference a year and a half makes. In the twilight of 2006, the boxing world revolved almost exclusively around mediocre heavyweight matches and low PPV sales, stirring the sport?s community into a panic when they thought of the future. As a response to the perceived crisis, I wrote an article with ten suggestions on how to ?save? the sport, a term the boxing media gobbled up and spit back out to us in heavy doses and with unnecessary regularity. Given how uncommon dull boxing weekends like this one just past have become between now and the date of my original article, October 2006, the opportunity has ripened for revisiting just exactly what improvements were made to revived our sport.
CAN?T EXPECT RADICAL CHANGES, BUT…
It is of little use to discuss the more radical changes proposed in the aforementioned article; as much as boxing would benefit from a heavyweight fight ban, heightened referee oversight on scorecards, optional 14-rounders, and limits on weight fluctuations, no one can expect such changes anytime soon and, in fact, the mouthwatering prospect of Manny Pacquiao (46-3-2, 25 KOs) rising up to the lightweight (135 lbs.) and junior welterweight (140) divisions certainly challenges the notion that keeping boxers within a range of weight will breed good match-ups. As for the more moderate proposals, only the request for more female boxing matches appears to have been completely absent from the current renaissance. The remaining wishes- pleas to stop avoiding the inevitable ubiquity of HBO?s Max Kellerman, to choose the fights that appear on PPV more carefully, to publicize younger fighters more and include them in more exciting undercards in 1990s Don King style, and to return master knockout artist Edwin Valero (23-0, 23 KOs) to the United States have been addressed in either their forward entirely or backdoor ways that have made a splash in past year.
VALERO RETURNS & MAX STAYS (SADLY WITH JIM)
Boxing magnates addressed the more personal issues more efficiently: Edwin Valero was recently cleared to fight in Texas and Max Kellerman has taken over (he will never replace) Larry Merchant on HBO broadcasts, the latter of which has been forced out. While it is unfortunate for spectators that announcing dud Jim Lampley still occasionally haunts the broadcasts and a sage like Merchant has taken leave from a service he provided so brilliantly for so long, the presence of such a polarizing and therefore marketable- figure as Kellerman, especially when playing off of the wholesomely likeable Bob Papa, bring much to the sport for the younger generations that have yet to have their own Merchant or Howard Cosell. They begin dialogues about boxing that more mainstream fans may not have the knowledge to start themselves and in that capacity become teachers to their audience.
NEW STARS/UNDERCARDS MAKE GOOD NIGHTS
The younger fighters have certainly benefited from the subtle changes made to the sport since 2006; in fact it is only after this time and post-crisis period that fans begin to see significant publicity movements behind rising stars like recognized World middleweight (160) champion Kelly Pavlik (33-0, 29 KOs), rising welterweight Andre Berto (21-0, 18 KOs), and, to a lesser extent, Kermit Cintron (29-1, 27 KOs), who is scheduled to repeat history in more ways than one against Antonio Margarito (35-5, 25 KOs) on April 12. The solution to this problem intertwined with others; the undercards become increasingly more exciting as these younger players make their fight night debuts and showcasing fighters at their peak like Gomez and Cintron on HBO and not on PPV restores some faith in the system for fans. Broadcasting fights like these on non-PPV channels also allows for the casual observer to gain interest in the sport; leaving any fight that has a remote chance of being entertaining to PPV is merely preaching to the choir- the fans that do not mind hashing out the money to watch a fight in order to get their boxing fix. If one of the major goals of getting out of this publicity recession is to attract ratings from demographics not usually inclined to boxing, telling them to take your word for it and spend $50 on a sport they are not acquainted with is absurd.
EVEN PPV RESPONDED TO 2006 DROUGHT
But even so, fights that are broadcast on PPV have improved their quality in leaps and bounds, as if the fighters are more aware of the service they must do to their audience, and the promoters more in tune with the wishes of their customers. And even Pacquiao himself demonstrated skill last weekend that he had never showed before (well, it appeared that he thought about where a punch he threw might land before executing it). As much as many criticize him, the Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) performances against Oscar De La Hoya (38-5, 30 KOs) and Ricky Hatton (43-1, 31 KOs) were far superior to many in his career before those points, and came in more rapid succession that what we had been accustomed to for such a fighters.
CAN THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER?
The best thing about these improvements is that they have yet to finish, and the greatest one thus far that has yet to be mentioned is how strong the pairings have been. The fight between Joel Casamayor (36-3-1, 22 KOs) and Michael Katsidis (23-1, 20 KOs) a week or so ago proves that fighters sometimes considered less exciting can explode when combined, and we have quite a tasty buffet of fights prepared for us in April and later in the future.
