For those of you who know me, you know that I'm a boxing fan. Something I always enjoyed doing was sitting around with my dad and a few other guys watching the big fight. There is something about the sport that intrigues me. A great, well-fought fight is like a work of art, and unfortunately, the artists are becoming few and far between.
Having been at a bachelor party this weekend, I was unable to see the Manny Pacquiao/Shane Mosley fight Saturday night, but I read about it here while I'm sitting at the airport waiting for my flight back home. From the sounds of it, the fight was the definition of one-sided. It's a widely shared opinion that Manny Pacquiao is the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world currently. Everyone is still dying to see what would be considered the "Fight of the Century" between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Unfortunately, even if that fight does take place, I'm not sure it would be enough to save the sport of boxing.
With MMA soaring in popularity over the last few years, boxing has lost quite a bit of luster, and it's really a shame. There are so many good, young fighters out there right now that are fighting a lot of tremendous fights, but for some reason, no one seems to care. The fact that you probably wouldn't be able to find someone that could name three heavyweight fighters right now is sad. The fact that there hasn't been a truly meaningful heavyweight fight in almost 10 years is even sadder.
Like all sports have done over the course of time, sometimes rules need to be changed or modified a bit for the betterment of the sport. I don't think boxing should be an exception to that. Maybe something along the lines of penalties for clinching would be something that could possibly speed up the sport a bit, especially at the heavyweight level. Or, better than even a rule change, perhaps televising a big time boxing match on network television might do the trick to help build a little steam around it. Let's be honest, at $64.99 for an HD pay-per-view, you're not going to get many of the average sports fans to pony up the money, even for a superstar like Manny Pacquiao.
The truly sad thing is that with the popularity of MMA now, many athletes are preferring to go that route than to lace up a pair of boxing gloves. You can go into bars now and see huge signs for the MMA fight coming up, but see very few for any boxing bout taking place. Aside from DirecTV and Xfinity, there didn't seem to be a lot of talk about the Pacquiao/Mosley fight at all, and obviously after the result, for good reason. But, when the mainstream media is giving more publicity to the MMA fighters and the UFC PPV events than they are boxing, why wouldn't a heavyweight athlete decide to steer toward mixed martial arts?
I will always be a fan of boxing, and still find it hard to get really into MMA. I continue to hope for the day where boxing finds its way back to mainstream status, and not just an afterthought.
Thoughts?
Its not that easy. A majority of the MMA fighters have backgrounds in wrestling on top of there training in whatever school of mixed martial arts. Im not saying that boxers wouldnt be capable, but there training on basically just the striking and defense of the sport when there is alot more too it.
ReplyDelete