(A whole ‘nother kind of skeptic: David Hume)
I’m all for being skeptical of boxers, promoters and networks. But there is a specific kind of selective skepticism that reeks of bias and cynicism that too often takes hold in large swaths of the boxing media and boxing fandom; it often looks to me like people trying to prove how much more tough-minded they are than the next guy.
Real skepticism, applied equally to all claims, is better. I’ll give you an example: I have no allegiance to HBO (I criticize them in an item below, for example), nor any ax to grind. I do think there’s a big percentage of boxing media/fandom, though, that automatically assumes anything HBO does is terrible. Maybe that’s due to years of build-up of hostilities where the oft-correct conclusion, based on past HBO behavior, is that HBO is doing something terrible.
But it’s a pretty close-minded approach. When someone raises an affirmative claim – “HBO’s decision X is terrible” – my first reaction is to wonder, “Is it?” Because if it isn’t, or at least there’s a highly reasonable case that it isn’t, and I parrot the original affirmative claim unthinkingly, I’m wrong. I’m not more tough-minded than the next guy. Oh, I sound tougher. But in reality, my position is one of weakness. Sometimes, however infrequently for my (and our) tastes, boxers, promoters and networks do the right thing. You can be fake-tough and deny it when it happens. Or you can be take the more difficult stance and acknowledge it, because it’s more difficult to defend something and be accused of over-optimism or naivete.
I’m stuck on this because no one yet has provided me an answer to my challenge about this past weekend’s HBO/Golden Boy Promotions pay-per-view card. I say that the card as put together was stacked, top-to-bottom, with meaningful bouts like no other card I can think of in recent years. Some say people like me fooled themselves into thinking that, with a push from GBP, which admittedly was hyperbolic about things by calling it “The Night Of The Year.” But I’m still waiting for someone to show me a pay-per-view card that had four bouts as meaningful in the last several years. I don’t want to be shown that it was oversold by the promoter (as though that never happens); I recognize that. I don’t want to be shown that the fights failed to be barnburners; I recognize that, too, but it’s irrelevant to whether an undercard is “stacked” or not, because all you can do is put meaningful fights together on paper and hope they deliver.
And I honestly want someone to show me the error of my ways. I’m trying to be skeptical even of my own conclusions here. But it’s hard when nobody gives me a reason – when it looks like they’re just reflexively rejecting things. (By the way, the show did pretty decent business, according to GBP – in the neighborhood of 200,000 buys. That doesn’t prove my historical argument about strong undercards being good for boxing, per se, because my interest was always in the long-term ramifications of a series of good undercards. But it’s ammunition. It’s newsworthy that a card with a headlining bout between two fighters coming off losses did that well. It suggests that if a good number of people are excited about an undercard, it can contribute to sales.)
Quick Jabs
This’ll be a media-heavy edition of Quick Jabs, FYI. First, Lance Pugmire has a good piece here about Top Rank and GBP refusing to speak with one another. It’s recommended reading. It puts the length of the freeze into hard terms. All you can do is look at it and be discouraged, though…
Well-written though it was, I was less impressed by this Atlantic piece that’s headlined “How Boxing Became a Niche Sport.” I don’t think it actually answers that question satisfactorily. The writer doesn’t have it in for boxing – he’s a fan – but he ignores some inconvenient facts as it pertains to the premise (boxing has seen a surge in mainstream coverage in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.) and gets some things plain wrong (the negotiations for Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fell apart not because one side refused to acknowledge the negotiations took place but because one side didn’t provide an answer by the other side’s deadline). And, I’m kind of sick of publications, including the recent New Yorker piece I otherwise praised, knocking the proliferation of belts without acknowledging that the Ring belt is as good a way to solve the problem as any out there. At a certain point, just pointing to the symptoms over and over about alphabet belts without prescribing any viable medication gets old…
Steve Kim has a scoop-y piece on deposed middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik that’s worth reading. If you’ve followed Pavlik’s career in recent years, you know that chaos is its main trait. Now there’s feuding within Pavlik’s camp that includes a dispute between his father and trainer. Pavlik, apparently, is doomed to permanent turbulence…
I keep a feed of Google News to the right of the main column centered on the word “boxing” because it’s helpful to see what’s making headlines in the boxing world these days, and this week has largely been disheartening. Most of the news is about a frivolous-sounding lawsuit by a no-name boxer who claims Mike Tyson stole his nickname “Iron Mike” and how Mike did the movie “Hangover” to fuel his drug habit. Also, about a guy who allegedly mortally injured his toddler son by giving him a “boxing” lesson…
I might explore this further with some reporting at some point if it turns out to be a trend, since the number of media credentials I’ve applied for in my life is fairly small. But twice in recent application forms for media credentials to cover fights ringside, there’s been a note at the end about how someone with the promoter wants you to be sending your pre-fight coverage to them. One even said it would “help us process your request.” Both make me uncomfortable. I infer from it – maybe it was implied – that if I write something about the fight prior to the application being accepted, it could help me get a credential, and, more darkly, it could help me get a credential if I wrote it a certain way. Since much of my pre-fight coverage is the week of the fight, usually after a credential application has been decided, I wouldn’t want to adjust my schedule just to boost my chances of getting said credential. Additionally, more than one boxing writer has suspected that they’d been denied credentials for writing a certain way, or even claimed that a promoter told them that’s why they’d been denied a credential. This just is a bit more institutionalized version of that, apparently, and it makes me very uncomfortable…
So HBO is fully supporting the Shane Mosley-Sergio Mora pay-per-view September card that most everyone has dissed. Combined with its support of last weekend’s bout, it does represent a degradation of HBO’s commitment last year and early this year to avoid doing as many pay-per-views by limiting them only to the biggest mega-bouts. Last weekend’s card didn’t bother me as a pay-per-view too much, but you can’t deny that it wouldn’t have been PPV-worthy using HBO’s 2009 measure. Mosley-Mora, as a headlining bout, isn’t even really HBO-worthy, which is why it’s on PPV at all. And that’s even including the fact that I’m not as down on the undercard as some (it’s not particularly good, but Saul Alvarez-Carlos Baldomir, Victor Ortiz-Vivian Harris and Daniel Ponce De Leon-Miguel “Mickey” Roman isn’t as bad any number of recent undercards). If you try, you can figure out a way that this card makes money despite how widely loathed it is. That doesn’t justify it, though. It’s HBO’s involvement with this that is an unwelcome reversal…
I’ve really stayed out of it, because I simply can’t get worked up about the Twitter antics of a 10-0 prospect, but OK, Omar Henry has made an ass out of himself there lately with stunts like pronouncing that Leonard Ellerbe was his adviser (apparently, untrue). Then again, so have the people on Twitter who’ve reacted so harshly to it, and, in turn, the people who have reacted so harshly to those who have reacted so harshly to Henry’s stunts. If the guy’s a media hog, that’s his business; the best way not to fuel such a thing is not to give him the attention he wants so badly…
There’s another boxing movie out – “The Kid: Chamaco” – and it got a good review in the New York Times. I haven’t seen any of the recent boxing-themed movies that have been out in the theaters. Gotta change that, maybe with this one.
