The Slow Death of Boxing

Ah, boxing: the only athletic pursuit that draws less interest in America than hockey.

Last night, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather squared off in a light middleweight (154 lbs) title fight that was supposed to single-handedly revive the sport. Mayweather came in having advanced over 5 weight classes in his career and sporting a 37-0 record. De La Hoya, clearly just past his prime and age 34, came in with 4 losses but holding the belt (the sixth weight class title he's had).

De La Hoya, and his promotional company, are out to "save" boxing by taking fights out of the hands of promoters like Don King and Bob Arum, the crooks who have systematically robbed fighters and fans alike over the past 3 decades. The current state of the sport is dire: fighters make very little money and have very short careers. Promoters rake in as much as possible and arrange fights few fans want to see but will still pay for--because it's the only way they'll get to see any boxing at all. Most champions are acknowledged to be shams: the sanctioning bodies all disagree on who the top contenders are, who the champions are, and even what the weight classes are!

So De La Hoya, a boxer, wants to change some of that. He wants to create a stable of top boxers who will arrange their own fights, with other elite fighters, and retain most of the money from those bouts. It seems like a good idea.

Fighting Mayweather, who is considered the pound-for-pound best pugilist in the world at this minute (a silly designation, really, but useful in certain circumstances), was going to be giving the people what they wanted. It was supposed to be a Leonard-Hagler matchup--brawling, puches-in-bunches excitement. This one event would bring in a whole new set of fans, once people saw what boxing could be when it was done right, and for the right reasons.

Well, that fight motherfucking sucked.

Mayweather, who was a very light 150 pounds, having actually lost 4 pounds since the weigh-in, stayed outside all night and jabbed away. He got caught on the ropes a few times but then slipped out, refusing to brawl with De La Hoya. To me, he looked awkward on defense, nowhere near the escape-artist he was supposed to be. He had zero power at that weight, too, and he was unable to mark De La Hoya, let alone knock him out as he had promised pre-fight. In short, Floyd Mayweather is a joke against someone who can actually box (Mayweather, to put it politely, has never fought anyone worth naming).

De La Hoya, older and heavier, tried for the first 6 rounds to get Mayweather to throw with him. He backed him into the corner, he threw combinations, he tried to land power punches. Mayweather just kept backing up. It was exactly as exciting, interesting, and re-invigorating for the sports fan as watching a pitcher intentionally walk somebody; or watching a team down by 20 intentionally foul for the final 3 minutes of a basketball game; or a football team calling timeout to "ice" the kicker on a 30-yard field goal try.

Except, of course, in this case the guy playing spoiler was ahead on the cards. Mayweather threw a lot more punches and landed several--though far fewer, in my opinion, than he was credited with, as De La Hoya caught most of them with his gloves--though no power punches or body shots. He danced away, always away, and jabbed efficiently for 12 rounds. Efficient jabs, though nice, are not going to inflame the masses.

So that is it, then: boxing's best matchup, the one no crooked promoter would make, the fight "the people demanded" to see, was a flop. One fighter was there to entertain and incite; the other was there to get the win (his last, as Mayweather announced his retirement afterwards) and to look pretty doing so. The politics of the moment escaped him.

And in the end, just to add insult to injury, it was a split decision. Discounting the "aggressor" theory (that is, many judges will score a bout for the more aggressive fighter, whether he's actually being successful in landing his punches and as though good defensive fighters don't belong in the sport), I had the fight 115-113 for Mayweather. He simply didn't get hit--because he didn't box--but he managed to land just enough jabs to win rounds. But one judge actually scored the fight 115-113 for De La Hoya, with the other two going for the winner.

This, I believe, was the kiss of death from organized boxing to Oscar De La Hoya. De La Hoya wanted a clean fight, one that was above suspicion, and so one of the judges threw the decision precisely to remind all the fans--who were already steamed over the poor fight--that boxing is crooked, and it always will be, and nobody is going to make it otherwise.