When Good Boxing Writers Go Bad

Generally speaking, any article that attacks the title sanctioning bodies, I’m all for. But George Kimball — one of our finest boxing writers, and a nice guy — has put together a piece today that’s got all kinds of mistakes, by my accounting. Like, a ton.

My specific beef with the article is what he says about the Ring magazine belt policy. He makes some good points here and there, but mostly he’s way off, both factually and philosophically. I’ll go point by point.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but did you happen to notice that The Ring presently lists its welterweight title as “vacant?”   

                                                                                       

The makeup of the Ring panel is cloaked in anonymity, but the suspicion here is that the people who attach the most significance to the Ring belts are in many cases the very people who vote for them in the first place.

It’s easy [sic] critical of the ridiculous and often nonsensical methods of the recognized sanctioning bodies over. Their ratings are often arbitrary, and their excuses for stripping championships often indefensible and badly in need of reform. This has not escaped the attention of the authorities, by the way. A key provision in the new boxing reform bill introduced by Sen. John McCain this year would make the alphabet groups answerable, by law, for every seemingly precipitate action in this regard. 
But in the meantime, it should be obvious that the last thing the boxing needs to eradicate the confusion is a fifth sanctioning body, but that’s exactly what the Ring is trying to be, and people who should know better seem more than willing to encourage them.

The conflict of interest inherent in a publication owned by a major promoter is so evident that it shouldn’t even require mention.

And beyond that, given the sordid history of corruption in earlier eras of that publication’s history provide good reason for the present administration’s reluctance to identify its voters, since to do so would on the surface appear an open invitation to bribery. But we know who’s on the ratings committees of the WBC and the WBA and the IBF and the WBO. If Ring is reluctant to publicly disclose its panel, it does strike me that at the very least a scribe who insists on labeling the magazine’s ratings “the best,” or “the most honest,” or “the most accurate” should also disclose “Oh, and by the way, I have a vote in these rankings.”

The Ring will try to tell you that they’re honoring a time-honored philosophy and recognizing “lineal” champions, but that isn’t always true, either. Sometimes they wind up, as they did a few years ago, declaring Vitali Klitschko the heavyweight champion of the whole world at a time when it seemed clear to most that he wasn’t even the best heavyweight in the Ukraine.

Sometimes they wind up following the linear breadcrumb trail up a blind alley, and recognizing a Joel Casamayor while ignoring a guy who has three belts hanging in his trophy room.

And sometimes i
f a championship isn’t readily available, they’ll go out and create their own, which is what happened when Bernard Hopkins fought Winky Wright for what Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer proclaimed “the Ring Magazine 170-pound championship.”

One more bit of full disclosure here. I have no idea how it operates now, but two decades ago I used to vote on the Ring panel. This would have predated P4P lists and unilaterally-awarded championship belts, and the process was conducted by mail, with paper ballots. Sometimes I’d find myself on the road and miss a deadline. A few other times I just plain forgot to fill it out on time. And on each occasion, when the pertinent issue came out a few months later, I could see exactly how much one missing ballot had skewed the rankings, which if nothing else suggests that this was a pretty small sampling of worldwide experts at work.

The Ring people will try to tell you that their titles can only be lost and won between the ropes. To win a Ring belt a man must supposedly either beat a reigning champion, or win a box-off between the No. 1 and 2 rated fighters to fill a vacant title. And their titles, they will try to tell you, are vacated only when a boxer (a) retires, (b) loses in the ring, or (c) moves up in weight. That would all sound reasonable were it remotely true, but in practice it has not been the case. Depending on the promoter or the network showing an attractive fight these guys will hand out a belt faster than you can pin the tail on the donkey. In some instances they’ve been quicker to strip a champion than any alphabet you can name. In others they’ve allowed their belt to languish around a fighter’s waist long beyond any common sense would dictate – sometimes, it would appear, for no reason other than to thumb their noses at the recognized sanctioning bodies.

Just a few instances, keeping the aforementioned criteria in mind: When Lennox Lewis, who beat Vitali Klitschko in his final fight, retired, the Ring awarded its belt to Vitali. Five years later it’s unclear whether that was for beating Kirk Johnson or Corrie Sanders or Danny Williams, none of whom could remotely have been described as the second-best heavyweight.

The Ring decided Joe Calzaghe was no longer a super-middleweight even before Joe did, vacating the title when he moved up to fight B-Hop – even though Calzaghe had formally petitioned two sanctioning bodies to remain their 168-pound champion.

And if moving up in weight is supposed to disqualify a champion, how did Ricky Hatton, who did it twice – to fight first Luis Collazo and then Mayweather  – keep the 140-pound title all those years? And hasn’t Kelly Pavlik fought as many times at super-middle as he has at middleweight over the past 16 months? Depends on who you are, I guess.

The Ring recognized Casamayor, who had beaten Diego Corrales in an over-the-weight match to win the lightweight title, for almost three years, an era in which Nate Campbell owned three belts, Pacquiao, the pound-for-pound champion owned the other, and the Ring “champion” none.

Flying in the face of all logic, even after Casamayor, in one of his rare outings, had been utterly exposed by Jose Armando Santa Cruz, he was still recognized by Ring.

Then when Campbell lost his titles on the scale last February, the Ring sanctioned a match between Marquez, who had lost to Pacquiao, and Juan Diaz, who had lost to Campbell.

Marquez picked up two vacant titles in the bargain, but neither those nor the Ring belt will be on the line when he faces Mayweather, another defrocked Ring champion, in July.

The Ring didn’t wait three weeks after David Haye had his first heavyweight fight to strip him and award its cruiserweight title to the Thomasz [sic] Adamek-Steve Cunningham winner, yet they continue to recognize Israel Vazquez as their 122-pound champion even though he hasn’t fought anybody in the past fifteen months.

Vazquez has been injured, but his prolonged inactivity got him stripped by the WBC. We mention this not to suggest that the Ring should have stripped him too, but merely to point out how inconsistent the magazine is in applying even its own standards. Maybe the Ring ought to designate him its “champion in recess.”

But suppose Congress passes the new boxing bill and decides that if the Ring, if it’s going to go around handing out belts on television, should be held accountable by the same standards as any other sanctioning body. You don’t think these people are going to have some ‘splainin to do?

Vasquez is only one of two current Ring champions who doesn’t own a bona fide belt. The other, curiously, is Pacquiao, who was fighting as a 140-pounder for the first time the night he slaughtered Hatton, and hence came away with only the IBO version to show for it.