In a perfect world, every fight would be an epic slugfest, the fans would be the ultimate matchmakers, and cotton candy would grow on trees while little, cute bunnies did our laundry for us.
Wake up. The world of big time boxing is hardly perfect and the usual suspects, who get the blame for questionable matchmaking and shady dealings, are merely thriving in the world that we created by supporting fan-unfriendly cards and turning our backs on the shady aspects of the sport.
There has been a generous dose of justified outrage following the announcement that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez would be defending his WBC junior middleweight title against faded former three-division world champ, Shane Mosley May 5th as the chief support to the Floyd Mayweather-Miguel Cotto main event on pay per view.
Alvarez is a 21-year-old star on the rise while the 40-year-old Mosley hasn’t looked good since knocking a plaster-less Antonio Margarito loopy back in January of 2009. The natural reaction as a fan is to blast the Alvarez-Mosley match-up and let loose with the usual refrain of, “and this why boxing is dying!”
The criticisms are understandable, of course, but is this stuff still news, still rant-worthy?
In the real world, (once again, a real world that we created), what else were Team Alvarez and Golden Boy supposed to do?
Golden Boy has two of the three top junior middleweights in the world in Alvarez and James Kirkland. By matching their two fighters against one another, the end result would be them losing one of their assets for a fan base that won’t be growing any and for money that will not likely be any different than if both fighters took on lesser fighters.
You can rule out any Top Rank fighters for Alvarez, at least not as a co-feature on a Floyd Mayweather card.
So, what’s left?
Cornelius Bundrage, Delvin Rodriguez, Gabriel Rosado, Austin Trout, or Erislandy Lara?
True, any of these fighters would likely provide a closer, more competitive bout than Mosley, but boxing is a business. Shane Mosley, even if he’s brought to the ring in an iron lung and needs to be defibrillated between rounds, garners more attention and sells more pay per views than any other realistic option.
The real question to pose to the critics is not: Why Mosley? Rather, it should be: Why can’t anyone with a pulse actually sell a ticket?
The system is broken, folks. The reasons and variables are too immense to discuss in just one little article. Let’s just say that the inmates are running the asylum and boxing, a sport which has always flirted with the dark side of conduct, has drifted so far into chaos that anything short of a total shut down and restructuring would be the equivalent of just shifting papers from one desk to another.
The shady goings-on of the sport have so alienated mainstream fans that they are not willing to invest time into knowing the next generation stars. So, unless it’s a fighter of the Oscar De la Hoya/Roy Jones era, there’s no real reaction among the general public. And no reaction equals no money.
And that takes us back to Alvarez-Mosley.
If a 20-year-old kid, who had never beaten a Top 10 contender, is allowed to win a vacant 154 lb. world title by beating a fringe 147 lb. contender, then how can anything that happens afterward inspire outrage? It’s all been a fraud from the very beginning.
Golden Boy and Canelo Alvarez aren’t to blame for cynically choosing a fight with Shane Mosley on May 5th? We are.
By purchasing lousy cards, by not supporting our younger fighters, and by not pushing for real reform in boxing, we’re getting exactly what we deserve.
Paul Magno was a licensed official in the state of Michoacan, Mexico and a close follower of the sport for more than thirty years. He is also a contributor to Fox Sports. In the past, Paul has done work for Inside Fights, The Queensberry Rules and Eastside Boxing.
