Hello, my name is Brian. I was born in Cali, raised in Texas, and currently live in New York City. So far, that's all you know about me. What you don't know is that I love films and sports. But the sport that I truly love is Boxing. It's more then just a sport to me, it's an art form. Now you wonder how can a barbaric sport like Boxing be considered an art form? It is anything that involves both skill and creativity. Anybody can pick their nose, but can you apply skill and creativity to it? In this sense, everything that we do could be considered an art form. From riding a bike, to walking, to eating a big meal. And this is why sports like Boxing, foot ball, basketball, and even UFC can be considered art.
How many times have you heard people call Michael Jordan an artist? I've heard that many times. Same goes for people who praise great boxers like Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Willie Pep. Same goes for people who praise foot ball players like Emmit Smith or Randy Moss. Their artists, who express themselves through a sport that they know and love.
As of right now, boxing isn't as popular as it use to be. Back in the old days, the media would go nuts over any major boxing match. A Heavyweight championship bout would make the front page on almost any newspaper throughout the world. Fighters had egos, but they still tested themselves against some top notch competition and continued to challenge themselves. You had politics and dirty tactics going on behind the scenes back in those days, but nothing that would turn people off and look down on the sport. Mainly due to the fact that they never had facebook, twitter, youtube, or myspace to make the American public witness the dirty side of boxing. It's also considered to be boring these days, because we have elite fighters who either play it too safe in the ring, or simply don't create intriguing fights for the general public.
People wonder why people have lost their interest in boxing. Personally, I think the sport has too many belts, alot of bad judges in big fights, and big egos. It doesn't help that the Heavyweight division is completely awful these days. And boxing has always been a money game, but nothing to this degree. Now you have fighters turning down interesting and meaningful match ups because of either their stubbornness, or money. Money did matter in the old days, but the best still fought the best. Maybe fighters like Ray Robinson, Ray Leonard, Ali, Hagler, Pep, and Duran got lucky. These fighters also cared about the big payday, and it was probably just a coincidence that they were able to make a large amount of money, by fighting some of the top elite fighters in their era. You see, we live in an age where some average joe could become famous, by either crying or singing on youtube. And whatever you post online can be read by millions of people. In other words, you can have 15 minutes of fame by doing practically nothing.
So my point is that if you can gain enough internet buzz in a boxing match, you can make big bucks. Floyd Mayweather does this brilliantly. He uses the media, the internet(twitter), and a ground breaking show called "24/7" to gain a large amount of hype and momentum in order to create a mega fight. At this point, he can fight a nobody, and still get good Pay-Per-View buys. The fact that he appeared on "Dancing With The Stars" a couple months before his fight with Ricky Hatton, was no coincidence. He was simply trying to elevate his fame on that show, so people would become more interested in seeing his next fight.
The point I'm making is that Boxing doesn't seem to have the importance that it use to have. Because of the internet, elite fighters like Mayweather can make nothing out of something, and have people wondering why they paid money to see it. Some blame can also go towards Top Rank promotions, who give people a dull fight between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey, with some of the worst undercard fights ever put on television. Forget the fact that it had the biggest audience in over 20 years, with the fight being marketed as an exciting war between two warrios. When in reality, it was a fight between an intelligent brawler(Pacquiao), and a quiet counter-puncher(Clottey). And the result was a C- at best.
This fight happened, because Pacquiao didn't want to agree to blood testing. Logic says that if you're turning down 40 million dollars because you don't want to do random blood testing, then alot of intelligent people will assume that you're taking some type of illegal substance. Personally, I'd like to believe that he didn't like being accused of juicing by the Mayweathers. Or maybe he's smoking weed and doesn't want that to be revealed, since he's running for office in the Philippines. The latter makes sense. Even though Pacquiao's excuse is that he's afraid of needles and feels that it weakens him, and then brings up his loss against Erik Morales. Which not only makes Pacquiao look like a fool, but it takes away Morales dominating victory over Pacquiao. Has anybody noticed him making this excuse against Marquez? No, because he has none. He didn't take a blood test 3 days before fighting Marquez in either fight. He was wearing the gloves that he wanted to wear and was mentally perfect for those fights. And he still came close to losing both of them, so he has no real excuse for either fight. He also has tattoos on his body, which suggests that he's not entirely afraid of needles. Is he afraid of certain type of needles? Is that even possible? I'm still confused on this issue, so I'll just let it go.
Sadly, people will point to Mayweather as the bad guy, due to the false rumors of him ducking fighters. The only fighter that he's probably ducked in his whole career, is Antonio Margarito. And alot of that had to do with Bob Arum's refusal to agree with Mayweathers demands. Which is also why the Mayweather-Cotto fight never happened. But since Mayweather talks trash and makes himself the villain, people blame him for the Pacquiao fight falling apart. This is what happens when you play the role of a villain. No matter what you do, people will dislike you and make false accusations. I think Mayweather wants to make Boxing a cleaner sport. Or maybe he's afraid to lose and has decided to add on an extra rule to the sport of boxing. So if he does lose to Shane Mosley on May 1st, he'll still be able to sleep at night, knowing that he lost fair and square.
Boxing is still an exciting sport in my opinion. We have an interesting Middleweight showdown between Kelly Pavlik and Sergio Martinez. We have Kessler fighting Carl Froch. We got a mega fight between Floyd Mayweather jr and Sugar Shane Mosley. And Paul Williams is fighting Kermit Cintron. Boxing also has a HUGE fanbase over at the UK, who seem to marvel alot more at the art-form of the sport then us Americans. Americans want action, violence, and carnage when they watch a boxing match. The UK seems to appreciate the art of boxing, and could care less about the cheap thrills. At least that's what I see. It would explain why Winky Wright was a box office draw over there, and couldn't gain any fame in America until he beat both Shane Mosley(twice) and Felix Trinidad.
So due to the PPV numbers, and the fan base that it has gather throughout the world, I think boxing will live on a bit longer then what most people like to believe. I think Boxing needs only ONE belt for each weight division, younger judges who can actually see what their looking at, and better promoters. Don King was a dirty promoter, but he put together some really great fights, with memorable undercard bouts. And fighters need to tone down their egos and learn that it's not all about them, it is about the fans. Sports fans in general, are the reason that sports even exist. Without us, there would be no sports. If you please the fans, then you please the sport. So we deserve to see the best out of each sport and get our moneys worth. It's ironic that a so-called boring fighter like Floyd Mayweather jr. is giving Boxing fans the fight that we want to see, while the exciting Manny Pacquiao gave us a dull outing against Joshua Clottey. Which wasn't his fault, but that fight shouldn't of happened.
So I hope that Pacquiao will fight the winner of the Mayweather-Mosley fight. These fights need to happen!
