Fixing the Fight Game: Five Changes Boxing Should Have Made Yesterday

Boxing isn’t what it used to be. Bad fights, watered-down talent, and the rise of mixed martial arts have reduced it from contender to third-rate palooka in the sporting world. Oh sure, there has been the occasional diamond in the rough (the Mickey Ward-Arturo Gatti battles come to mind), but that isn’t enough to give boxing the boost it needs.

Fans are tired of paying high prices for mass confusion, boring fights, and complete disregard of what they want to see. Boxing is dying, and will continue to do so until these changes are made:

1. Set Championship Fights at 15 Rounds

A title fight once reminded us why these athletes were the greatest in the world. It went beyond a mere sporting event to the ultimate test of skill, will, and courage. Watching the Thrilla in Manilla or the first Leonard-Hearns fight, it was no wonder why boxing had grown rapidly from the dawn of the Roaring Twenties to the social unrest of the Sixties and Seventies.

Then on November 13, 1982, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini caught Duk Koo Kim with a punch that changed the sport forever. Kim had proven his resiliency throughout the fight. Mancini would later say there were moments when he thought about quitting. But early in the fourteenth round of a nationally televised contest, he landed a hard right to Kim’s face that dropped the challenger, his head crashing hard against the mat. Kim died of brain injuries four days later. As a result, for safety purposes, the governing bodies resolved they would cut championship bouts to just 12 rounds. But did it actually work?

Data from a 2007 study in the Journal of Combative Sport suggests no. The Nineties saw fatalities increase by 11. And as of November 2007, the number for this decade had already trumped the amount of deaths in the Eighties. Furthermore, data on fatal rounds indicates a significant drop after round 12, meaning if someone is going to die it will usually have nothing to do with rounds 13, 14, and 15. That’s not to say 15-round fights are safer. But it is an indication that round length has little to do with it.

Boxing is dangerous. It always will be. Nothing is going to change that. But you’re not going to get fighters to stop fighting. If the sport is to survive, it might as well be interesting. And when 15-round fights were the norm, it was. Holmes-Norton, Ali-Frazier, Joe Louis-Billy Conn, and Marvelous Marvin Hagler-Vito Antuofermo would have never happened without them.

2. Simplify Weight Classes

Why simplify the number of weight classes? There are seventeen of them. And the governing bodies can’t agree on what to call them. Is it cruiserweight or junior heavyweight, straw-weights or mini-flyweights? Semantics are confusing. Grizzled boxing journalists and die-hard fans might “get” it, but what’s the point? Does confusion add anything to the quality of the sport? It may be a small argument, but it’s representative of what casual fans have grown to hate about boxing: unnecessary complications. Which also leads to our next point:

3. Consolidate Governing Bodies

NABF, USBA, WBO, WBC, WBA, IBF: an alphabet soup of boxing bureaucrats pollute the sport’s landscape. That means over 100 champions. Factor in six different top tens competing against one another, and you have a system that makes the BCS look like a sensible way of crowning a college football national champion.

The governing bodies have turned boxing into a mess. And getting them to play ball is as likely as Democrats and Republicans agreeing on social issues or a health care plan. That’s why nothing short of government regulation or a UFC buyout will make this pipe dream come to pass. Which also means the next mandatory change will probably never happen, and that would be:

4. Unifying Titles

How do we give a damn about 100 titleholders? We go to work. We pay bills. We have families. We don’t have time to distinguish the players from the posers. You want to know why your audience is dwindling? Because MMA makes it easy to find the top dogs, despite featuring global competition.

Fighters come from all over the world to compete in the cage, yet it’s still easy to figure out. The titles mean something, and so do the fights. For this to happen in boxing, top fighters and promoters must defect and resolve to fight under one or two umbrellas. MMA pulled it off. Why can’t you?

5. Offer Good Fights for Free

MMA routinely gives away quality fight cards for a fraction of the cost of one over-hyped boxing pay-per-view. UFC offers The Ultimate Fighter reality show and Ultimate Fight Nights on Spike TV, while Strikeforce goes one better and gives Showtime subscribers their pay-per-views as regular programming. These are often big-named, top contenders fighting in exciting, edge-of-your-seat match-ups.

What have you done for me lately, boxing? ESPN Classic Replays? Friday Night Fight crapfests on Versus or ESPN 2? Is that the thanks your fans get for suffering through decades of horrible promotion, convoluted management, and an indifferent watering down of competition? No thanks, I’ll stick to combative sports that care about what I want until you realize you’re nothing without a fan base.

It’s wishful thinking. Some things are too messy to clean up. But if you ever want to get your act together, boxing, you know where to find those of us who’ve had enough. Until that day, keep doing what you’re doing. Add another hundred titles. Shorten championship fights to ten rounds. See if you can’t make everything a tad more complicated and a little more expensive. We’ll be cage-side watching fights with real contenders that mean something.