There was a sense, I think, that boxing had morphed from a tortured and constricted snake into one that was actually consuming itself?
?Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.??Plato
Truth be told, what spared boxing?s blushes in the wake of the disastrous summer 2012 decision for the first Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley robbery was the total incompetence of the people who organized it. From the WBO, for whose ?title? the fight was staged, to the judging panel that included the since suspended judge CJ Ross whose astounding ability to come up with a drawn cards in clear fights was already notorious, to promoter Bob Arum who, lest it be forgotten, is a man who has admitted to bribing rankings organizations in order to obtain status for his fighters, the fight reeked. But this is normal. Arum promotes dozens of fights, every year. CJ Ross was a judge in regular work, despite her ineptitude. The WBO gouges money from fighters every time one of them inexplicably decides to stump up cash to fight for one of those belts ? in fact they will be gouging fans and fighters both later this month after naming the grotesquely underqualified Alex Leapai as their #1 heavyweight contender, making one of the most ridiculous heavyweight championship bouts in living memory between him and Wladimir Klitschko.
The point is, only us, only the boxing fans and press would have gone into Bradley-Pacquiao-Bradley I expecting it to come out clean. Any other sport ? any other sport in the entire world ? where the fight was organized by a corrupt promoter and the fight was to be scored by at least one notoriously useless judge and the organization in overall control of the fight was known by the fans of that sport to be, at best, almost useless, in any other sport the fans would have been saying to one another, ?I got a bad feeling about this boys.? Boxing fans are so thoroughly and doggedly abused that we just?don?t?notice the fucking stink.
So guess what. They?re doing it again. Organizing the rematch is corrupt promoter Bob Arum. Overseeing the contest is the World Boxing Organization. And, best of all, incompetent simpleton Glenn Trowbridge sits among the judges.
Trowbridge makes Ross look like a genius. His 115-113 card in favor of Brandon Rios in 2012?s other horrorshow decision, the robbery of Richar Abril, would be the worst of the year if he hadn?t somehow been trumped by one of the other idiots on day release that had wandered into the stadium, had a pen stuck in his hand and then managed to find an even wider scorecard. In essence, the WBO and Arum lined their pockets in the first fight and now they are doing it again without even bothering to make it look right.
And, in a way, this is their protection.
Inconsistencies in judging and inexplicable refereeing are so much an accepted part of boxing culture that it protects any nefarious influences which may be profiting by it. In the immediate aftermath of the first Pacquiao-Bradley robbery, there was speculation voiced in every corner of the internet and by Teddy Atlas (God bless him on these worst of days, no matter how you feel about him the rest of the time) as to one thing ? were we robbed by thieves or embarrassed by imbeciles? David Matthew, writing for this website, was in no doubt.
?Let me be clear,? he said in the excellent Corruption Hidden In Plain Sight, ?[T]his was not an instance of judicial incompetence?[The judges] didn?t simply get it wrong with reasonably foreseeable analytical error. They got it wrong on purpose. This was a criminal display of unabashed corruption. Yes, the fight was fixed.?
Two days earlier, only a few hours after the closing bell, I had expressed similar feelings in Pacquiao Robbed ? Now Nobody Is Safe. After detailing the short e-mail I had sent to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, providing their e-mail address and inviting readers to do the same (many did), I begged, ?[O]nce you?ve sent your email, commit yourself to missing Pacquiao-Bradley II. I will not be buying it and you shouldn?t either. It must fail at the box office. Everyone that buys this fight is in some small way giving their blessing to the decision in the first one. After that what you need to do is pray that [judges] Ford and Ross are total idiots. Because if they?re not, they?re criminals.?
The reaction to both ?Corruption Hidden In Plain Sight? and ?Pacquiao Robbed? was overwhelming. I have never, in all my years as a boxing fan come across strength of feeling so pronounced as that which greeted this robbery. Perhaps this was because of Pacquiao?s visibility as one of the standard bearers of the sport. He was a cash cow, one of the two Hindu bovines that rightly or wrongly operated with impunity in boxing?s tortured power structure. Now this titanium rule had been shattered. There was a sense, I think, that we were watching the golden goose being slaughtered, that boxing had morphed from a tortured and constricted snake into one that was actually consuming itself.
Regardless of the reasoning, the comments sections below both of these offerings were swamped. People demanded an investigation by an FBI, rebuked ?the most corrupt sport ever? and most disturbingly declared that they were ?done with boxing? because, they quite rightly protested, what is the point? What is the point in gambling on, rooting for or trying to understand a sport where either criminality or incompetence, not excellence, decided the outcome of the struggle?
There is none; there is no point. The bottom line for many was nothing less than the direct refutation of boxing, by boxing. Something no abolitionist has been able to do in more than one-hundred years of protest, boxing itself achieved in an evening. If you think about it in those terms it seems almost a feat of greatness.
Since, things have cooled, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Pacquiao was beaten legitimately, by Juan Manuel Marquez, and by knockout no less. This is important, because it retrospectively undermined the sacredness of Pacquiao?s standing. The massed ranks of boxing?s fans fanned out just a little after that devastating right hand thrown by the Mexican. Secondly, Bradley rehabilitated himself the same way disgraced warriors have been rehabilitating themselves for a thousand generations ? in a war, with Ruslan Provodnikov. Bradley had done nothing wrong and the judges degraded him as surely as they stole from Pacquiao to the point where Bradley, the supposed victor, talked openly about retiring so great was his distress. After the intense violence of Provodnikov he was remembered no more as the villain of Las Vegas but the hero of California. The just evaporation of misdirected hate cooled the pot another few degrees.
Finally, time passed.
Remember that picture pre-robbery of Bradley holding aloft a huge mock-up of a ticket for a rematch, after his victory? That rematch was supposed to be held just months later. Why did that fight never take place?
For once, the stink had grown too foul even for boxing fans. For all that Arum, a man who has been pursued by the FBI for alleged criminality, is a hideous drain on boxing, he reads a crowd as well as anyone and the crowd was beyond fury. There was also the WBO to consider.
Whether it just makes its way in the world in a profound state of confusion or, as many fans believe, it is a corrupt organization, even the WBO couldn?t hold its nose through that stink. They ordered a review of the decision and installed a panel of five judges to perform it. When those judges inevitably found that the decision was disgusting there was talk of stripping the blameless Bradley and handing the belt back to the bemused Pacquiao. When Pacquiao announced that he did not want the belt but that he would welcome the WBO declaring it vacant instead, the WBO balked. There is nothing these organizations care for less than a vacant championship. It costs them money. The idea was quietly shelved.
Pacquiao also announced that he had no interest in fighting a rematch, because he had already beaten Bradley, which of course, he had. This was a brave stance, but it was inevitable that when the stink was obscured and the money was made right the rematch would come. And it has, for these reasons and for others.
?The only way to describe it is ridiculous. We?re not morons, all of us.?
That was Bob Arum speaking during the post-fight press-conference for the first robbery. Are we morons? I don?t know. I sometimes think the only way to enjoy boxing these days is with a shrug ? maybe to watch the fights like they are another entertainment, like WWE or a soap opera. When things go wrong, just tune out for a few days, then tune back in, refuse to take it seriously. But I?m not quite there yet. Are you?
If you?re not, skip this fight. Don?t buy it. Don?t validate that first decision. Do something with the kids, do something with your girl, go to the movies. Or better yet ? don?t pay, but stay close. There are alternatives. Here?s a quick Boxing.com guide to four different ways of catching the fight without condoning that robbery:
1 ? Wait for the fight to appear on YouTube or Boxing.com
Boxing has an uneasy relationship with YouTube and sites like it. On the one hand, companies like HBO know that they provide priceless exposure to commodities that they themselves only spotlight once or twice a year. On the other, it does represent a measure of signal theft and that is a buzz-word in the broadcasting industry that brings the thunder of the frowns of a thousand lawyers. Freshly contested fights tend to be up and down on video service websites in the weeks immediately after a fight for this reason, but this fight will be available in hours and days right immediately after. Skip it and catch it in the morning as part of Boxing.com?s coverage or at YouTube itself.
2 ? Monitor the round by round traffic on Twitter or a boxing forum
Dedicated fans take great pleasure in describing the action in great detail for those unlucky enough to be stuck at work ? or troubled by their conscience. The big three forums, Eastside Boxing, Check Hook Boxing and Boxing Scene will all produced detailed accounts of the fight as it unfolds (?Intentional Butt? at Eastside Boxing is perhaps the definitive ?RBR? currently). This will keep you abreast of the action until the video emerges.
3 ? Live in Britain, or another country where the fight isn?t pay-per-view
Because this is a question of bottom-line, there is nothing to be gained by missing a fight you aren?t paying for. I accept that ? just as I accept that it?s more than a little unfair to expect Americans and Canadians to skip the fight whilst condoning British and Irish fans sitting down in front of the television with a cold one. Be comforted my cousins across the ocean ? if you decide to boycott I, at the very least, will be shoulder to shoulder with you. There will be no free-to-air fight for me. The stink is on this one and I want nothing to do with it.
4 ? Direct signal theft
Almost every single broadcast channel you can name, pay-per-view or otherwise, from dedicated religious television to fetish-specific pornography is uploaded, live, to the internet. This is illegal, and is the sharp end of signal theft and we at Boxing.com do not condone it.
We absolutely do not condone watching this fight on the internet free of charge. We do not condone googling vipboxuk, clicking on ?boxing? and selecting Bradley-Pacquiao on the night of the fight. Nor do we condone searching for Wizwig.tv or ?HBO Stream? an hour before the fight begins. We advise strictly against using this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=httuIXjGz0Y to run your laptop through your television and we would not think to recommend that you keep other internet traffic to a minimum while you watch that television to prevent interference or lag.
We would not recommend it, because it is criminal, and criminals must be punished.
David Matthew?s surety that criminals, not idiots, were responsible for that debacle almost two years ago was once shared by the boxing community, but for most, that surety and the anger associated with it has slipped away. So I understand that this plea to punish the second fight for the crimes of the first will fall, for the most part, upon deaf ears. In the end, it is the hardcore fan that visits Boxing.com, and the hardcore fans feel bad about missing big fights like this one.
But do please have a think about it. And do remember, too, that if they should rob a fighter next Saturday night ? if they should rob you, the paying public ? it was obvious. The signs were there. There isn?t another sport in the world that would go ahead with an event of this magnitude with these bozos in charge.
Just the one where you risk your life every time you slip between those hallowed ropes. Follow us on Twitter@boxing_com to continue the discussion
