What The Hell Happened To...

Boxing?

Welcome to the first in my, let's say, 52 part series where I pick something that used to be good, and now isn't, or something that used to be relevant in some way and seems to be disappearing or seems to have already disappeared and talk about why. Even though this is about boxing, it doesn't count as a sports Friday thing, because it's really more of a cultural commentary. Not buying that? OK, how about because I said so?

This weekend I watched the Strikeforce MMA event on CBS. I don't get HBO anymore, so I'm stuck with whatever I can get on free TV, which is usually some version of MMA. I learned a couple of things. First, we are officially ancient Rome. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only barbarians to the north are the Canadians, and unless they have a secret plan to coat us all in maple syrup and take over the country while we're blissfully licking ourselves clean, I'm not that worried. Still, if you know any Visigoths or Huns, don't turn your back on them, just to be safe.

Most importantly, I learned that MMA isn't that great. I saw four fights. The first two were typically forgettable undercard fodder, highlighted by some guy with a huge, and I mean HUGE, head. I think he lost. The third match was awful. Five rounds, five minutes long each, all unwatchable. I should be able to sue CBS and Strikeforce to get that 30 minutes of my life back. A boring MMA fight is SO much worse than a boring boxing match. You don't really know a boxing match is boring until about the 6th round when you realize nobody is doing anything. 45 seconds into a bad MMA match, when the two guys are just sort of rolling around on the ground, you already know it's going to be a long night.

The main event on the MMA card was legitimately good. This was Fedor Emelianenko, who I'm told is considered possibly the best MMA fighter in world, and maybe ever, fighting some huge dude from Chicago (where the fight was being held) named Brett Rogers. The first punch of the fight destroyed Emelianenko's nose. He spent the rest of the fight bleeding all over the place, and since MMA involves a lot more clinching and, dare I say, grappling, all over the place included all over his opponent. About two minutes into round 2, after about 7 minutes of profuse, unstoppable bleeding, Emelianenko landed a huge punch right to Rogers' chin and Rogers collapsed like a Saddam Hussein statue circa 2003.

My point is, this wasn't any better than a typical boxing card. A couple of forgettable fights, one bad one, one really good one with a legitimate Ohhh! moment. If anything, it was worse, because, as I said before, a boring boxing match is still semi-watchable. A bad MMA match is absolutely unbearable, they should turn the cameras off. And yet, I always here how MMA is taking over, stealing boxing's market, becoming the new big fighting sport, and it seems to be true. So, what the hell happened to boxing?

I've heard experts complain that there aren't any good American heavyweights anymore, so no one in the U.S. cares about the premier weight class. I think this is a misdiagnoses. I don't think it has as much to do with a lack of good American heavyweights as it does with the lack of good heavyweights period. Ring magazine has Wladimir Klitschko (the W is silent, in that it will remain silent and not complain when you pronounce it like a V) as the world's top heavyweight. Somewhere around six years ago, I watched Klitschko get absolutely destroyed by some guy named Corrie Sanders, who I remember being described before the fight as a journeyman long shot who doubled as a golf pro or something, but then after he dismantled Klitschko, the guys on HBO couldn't wait to tell me how Sanders was a rough and tough fighter with a devistating left hand. Someone probably should have mentioned that to Wladimir before the fight.

I know people get better at what they do, and Klitschko has certainly gotten better. But still, would Ali have lost to Corrie Sanders? would young Foreman have? or Frazier? or young Tyson? or Joe Louis? I don't think so. We expect a certain level of dominance out of the heavyweight champ, a feeling of invincibility, which he carries around until he gets beaten by the next great champion. We're not getting it from Klitschko.

I also hear a lot of boxing experts talk about the alphabet soup of champions. I think this is a lot like people who complain about the DH, it's not an argument completely devoid of merit, but I don't think most fans actually care. The problem, I think, is that nobody knows who most of the champions are. If the champions in each weight class were the three or four best fighters at that weight and were promoted properly as such, I honestly don't think it would be a huge problem. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. In fact, I think I was the WBA middleweight champ for a couple of months. OK super middleweight...OK light heavyweight. My point is, we've got a lot of crappy champions.

And, even if we didn't have a lot of crappy champions, we wouldn't know it. Boxing seems to have gone out of its way to be as inaccessible as possible. Way to much pay-per-view, nothing on free television. It's like they're following the NHL's new "hey, we've got this great event, now we dare you to try to find it on your television" model. Only they've been doing it for like 25 years now, and on purpose. I know you can make money on pay-per-view, but not if nobody cares.

So, here's my suggestion, and it's so simple. Professional Boxing League. I'm sure somebody has already thought of this, but I'm thinking of it again. First, you form this league and you sign all the boxers to contracts negotiated the same way you negotiate all athlete contracts, based on talent and ability to draw (draw fans to events, although I'd enjoy it if the NFL payed guys based on their ability to make drawings. If that was the case, and there was a website that posted all the drawings, would you absolutely spend too much time there? Me too).

Second, you set up the TV schedule. I'd do it a lot like pro wrestling (which, by the way, has a what the hell happened to... blog coming its way soon). One or two weekly shows in prime time, featuring actual good fights with the top stars. You could still do pay-per-views, not as many as wrestling does now, maybe four a year. But, the pay-per-views wouldn't be a bunch of crappy undercard fights followed by an even crappier two round destruction of some poor, overmatched heavyweight who shouldn't even be allowed to look at a championship belt, let along fight for one. The pay-per-views would be main event after main event.

Like wrestling, all these good fights I've got scheduled would require the boxing league to build up stars. But that's one of my main points, boxing already has plenty of potential stars, it's just that, at the moment, very few people care. This would be the most important component of the boxing league. It would be run by smart people, who know boxing and whose only financial interest would be the success of the league, not individual fighters. Commissioner Bert Sugar has a nice ring to it. So does Deputy Commissioner Max Kellerman. They'd schedule the fights and decide who gets title shots. They could build a strong sport with proven champions, something in which people would be very interested.

I know, some fighters won't want to do it, promoters will hate it, the current organizations that run boxing will hate it even more. Fighters will swallow it if the guaranteed league contracts are big enough, and once you get enough guys on board, the rest will have to follow or they won't have anyone to fight. Buy off the organizations, give them a big bag full of money up front, or a percentage of the profits for some time moving forward. Again, if you're signing the boxers, they'll have to take it or leave it. And the promoters, screw those guys.

The bottom line is I don't care. Do you want to save the sport and keep it somewhat relevant? Then do this, or something else. I don't care what they do, and I don't care if everyone likes it, as long as they do something. I like boxing, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life watching MMA fighters roll around on the floor with each other.