Too Broke To Laugh

I grew up watching boxing at the start of the eighties and have been a fan ever since. There is electricity which is palpable when watching a boxing match between two evenly matched opponents that is unrivaled in all of sports. Two men, modern day combatants, wage war in a ring for the right to be called the victor. Boxing is a mental sport in as much as it is physical and often it is subtle tactical maneuvers during a match which precede victory more so than one blow to the head.  Boxing is the sweet science and unfortunately the younger, more desensitized generation of today isn’t interested in science, but rather with brutality which is why MMA is the combat sport of choice for them.

Somewhere along the way Boxing lost its Ali’s, Foreman’s, Frazier’s, Louis’,  Hagler’s, Leonard’s Duran’s and Holmes’ and found itself in the grasp of greedy promoters like Don King who made the sport more about the fifty dollar pay-per-view than about the story behind the fight. Lost was the personality that made boxing great, instead replaced with a hype machine which all too often didn’t match the price tag associated and viewers turned off in droves.

Today boxing is faced with a younger generation who no longer buy the hype, only to be provided with twelve rounds of tie-ups and little action. The younger generation of today has grown up with movies, music and video games which provide them with enthralling depictions of war, crime, sex and violence, and now they are getting a dose of this realism via MMA. The microwave generation of people wants instant action which MMA provides in a short 3 round burst and boxing all too often takes to long to develop through twelve possible rounds.

In order for boxing to survive the onslaught of MMA and capture the attention of the younger crowd, boxing officials need to update the sport, perhaps 6 round fights not 12, smaller gloves, smaller ring, steep penalties for tie-ups and quite possibly the elimination of the judges score card determining victory. Will professional Boxing ‘go out of business’ because of the popularity of MMA? I think the sport of boxing will continue on indefinitely and MMA isn’t immune to its own problems as reported by UFCBlogger. I love boxing and always will, but the sport needs re-tooling, so generations to come will look back and remember fights like I remembered growing up.

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