Things that are p*ssing you off about the sport?

FTA69

I often hear of people admonishing the sport for a variety of reasons; what are ye're particular bugbears about the state of boxing today, amateur or pro, local or international?

A few of mine:

1) The inactivity of fighters I have an interest in. Many people would rate Guillermo Rigondeaux and Andre Ward as being some of the top P4P fighters in the world but for a variety of reasons we are not seeing them in match ups. Personally I think it a crying shame that people of their talent and skill are being left to stew on the margins due to marketability issues or other stuff. At the end of the day, boxing fans just want to see the best men fight and anything that prevents that simply cause disillusionment with the sport.

2) The alphabet soup of titles. Ask half of the casual fans who the champion in a given weight is and they won't be able to tell you due to the sheer confusing array of titles out there. The fact we have five major organisations (and a host of lesser ones) is a joke really. At least in MMA it can be generally taken that the UFC champion is probably the best in the world at that weight. Secondly, they give the fans the fights they want to see with no bullsh*t and no politics. Something like the Super Six in every weight class would be unreal and would garner huge interest in the sport.

3) Mayweather v Pacquiao. If anything embodies everything that's wrong with the sport of boxing then this is it. Accusations of PED use, rivalry between promotion companies, personal fall outs, politics etc etc. It's a crying shame and a fight like this would have once been one of the biggest sporting events of all time. It's like cancelling the World Cup because the Argentinian FA thinks the Brazilian FA are a pack of w*nkers.

4) Headguards. I absolutely detest wearing these things. It feels like fighting with a microwave on my head with the door open. Secondly I personally think they accentuate the thud you get when taking a shot. Lastly, no matter what type I've had on, it's always felt like it was restricting my vision and generally felt like a pain in the arse.

walshb

Mismatches and hyped up mismatches. The best never meeting the best due to politics and squabbling. The usual sh1t. The fact that there could be 4-5 WCs in one division. An absolute joke.

As to the headgear. Well, isn't that gone form the amateur scene now? I don't see it as a problem. It's there for a reason. The pros wear them when sparring.

FTA69

It's gone from the elites but not the other classes as far as I know. The pros wear them to avoid cuts leading into a fight but it's pretty well established now that they do nothing to reduce the concussive impacts of a blow and in tact they probably make it worse. That having been said, I'm only expressing my own personal distaste for them. My next fight is without one thank god.

Chrissybhoy

Some Judges scorecards are ridiculous. Do judges actually get pulled up over scorecards or what way does it work

T-K-O

The growing number of belts. IMO, the root cause of a lot of the problems in the sport.

ASOT

Im going to be totally honest and say I havnt a clue whos the champion of what. Im not a die hard fan but id watch a fair bit and it still confuses the **** out of me.

HigginsJ

Chrissybhoy wrote: »

Some Judges scorecards are ridiculous. Do judges actually get pulled up over scorecards or what way does it work

This for me is the biggest one. If you are a champion fighting at home, short of getting knocked out cold you won't lose your title

getuponthis

Mayweather fan boys who watch Zero boxing other than his fights and go on about being part of the money team. Absolute Morons

walshb

pac_man wrote: »

4) From a personal perspective, I detest when people call boxers bums. I also dislike bandwagon supporters who become experts when either Mayweather fights or when the Olympics is on. However, I recognise that this isn't exclusive to boxing(i.e Dublin GAA).

I can relate to this, and I have been guilty myself. I have so much respect for boxers who get between the ropes to put their lives on the line. What bugs me is the mismatch aspect, which is somewhat related. Making out two boxers are matched fairly, or bigging up one boxer who is clearly not up to it.

FTA69

pac_man wrote: »

4) From a personal perspective, I detest when people call boxers bums.

That's a big one for me, very few of these people know what it's like to drag yourself out of bed at 6am and go running in the dark when you already feel like you've been hit by a car. A lot of them also don't know what it's like to climb into a ring or the nervousness that builds weeks before a fight. It's disrespectful to the boxers involved and the sport in general.

Littlehorny

T-K-O wrote: »

The growing number of belts. IMO, the root cause of a lot of the problems in the sport.

I think this is the single biggest problem, a world title is not seen as the ultimate anymore, if five guys are world champions in the one weight then none of them are!

T-K-O

Littlehorny wrote: »

I think this is the single biggest problem, a world title is not seen as the ultimate anymore, if five guys are world champions in the one weight then none of them are!

Agreed, one belt cuts out all of the above problems.

Big Ears

T-K-O wrote: »

Agreed, one belt cuts out all of the above problems.

Not feasible though. Short of a multi-millionaire (or more likley billionaire) buying all the major organisations and merging them together it's not going to happen.

Well either that or the major tv networks (probably the most powerful entity in the sport) coming together to form a World title and only recognising that title without even mentioning the others. This scenario is also never going to happen, there's more money to make (in the short term anyway) from that not happening.

Al Haymon is a major problem in the sport at the moment. There's not that many exciting fights getting made over in America and he's the main reason. Somehow he's able to get his guys massive purses for nothing fights. The only big fights Haymon fighters take part in, is with another Haymon fighter, and that's after tv companies have allowed those fighters to build the fight with 2-3 fights against guys nowhere near their level. It the tv companies also have a lot less money to try and make reasonable fights for non Haymon fighters with what's left.

The BUI and RTÉ are big problems here in Ireland. RTÉ haven't shown a professional boxing card in 3 1/2 years, and it's nearly 4 years since they showed a card where the production wasn't paid for by someone else.
The BUI charge extortionate fees in order to sanction a show and provide officials, this makes it extremely difficult for promoters to hold a show and not make a significant loss (sell outs sometimes result in breaking even).

The BUI problem won't be sorted until a promoter calls them on it and offers an ultimatum of a lower price or else they'll resort to using a different boxing commission (eg. the Maltese one, who have sanctioned bouts in the UK).
The RTE problem can only be solved when Ryle Nugent ****s off.

T-K-O

Big Ears wrote: »

Not feasible though. Short of a multi-millionaire (or more likley billionaire) buying all the major organisations and merging them together it's not going to happen.

Well either that or the major tv networks (probably the most powerful entity in the sport) coming together to form a World title and only recognising that title without even mentioning the others. This scenario is also never going to happen, there's more money to make (in the short term anyway) from that not happening.

Al Haymon is a major problem in the sport at the moment. There's not that many exciting fights getting made over in America and he's the main reason. Somehow he's able to get his guys massive purses for nothing fights. The only big fights Haymon fighters take part in, is with another Haymon fighter, and that's after tv companies have allowed those fighters to build the fight with 2-3 fights against guys nowhere near their level. It the tv companies also have a lot less money to try and make reasonable fights for non Haymon fighters with what's left.

The BUI and RTÉ are big problems here in Ireland. RTÉ haven't shown a professional boxing card in 3 1/2 years, and it's nearly 4 years since they showed a card where the production wasn't paid for by someone else.
The BUI charge extortionate fees in order to sanction a show and provide officials, this makes it extremely difficult for promoters to hold a show and not make a significant loss (sell outs sometimes result in breaking even).

The BUI problem won't be sorted until a promoter calls them on it and offers an ultimatum of a lower price or else they'll resort to using a different boxing commission (eg. the Maltese one, who have sanctioned bouts in the UK).
The RTE problem can only be solved when Ryle Nugent ****s off.

We are more likely to see more new titles not less, sadly. Haymon and his ilk can only operate under this system. Sign 20/30 fighters win the WBA title and ignore the rest. One title will never happen but it fixes almost all the major gripes.

Agreed on RTE - they are quick to jump on bandwagon (Dunne, McGregor) but do nothing to promote the sport.

Chrissybhoy

British refs jumping in to early to stop fights

barney4001

far to many world champions at each weight division all told there must be 50 or 60 so called world champions now

Littlehorny

barney4001 wrote: »

far to many world champions at each weight division all told there must be 50 or 60 so called world champions now

I could be way off but i think i heard there is 57! There used to be only 8, is there even too many weight divisions? Would love if someone with a lot more experience of boxing thinks of this.
Also catchweights should be banned outright, end of.

walshb

Paul Smith could get to be called a WC next week. That is what is wrong with pro boxing.

walshb

Littlehorny wrote: »

I could be way off but i think i heard there is 57! There used to be only 8, is there even too many weight divisions? Would love if someone with a lot more experience of boxing thinks of this.
Also catchweights should be banned outright, end of.

I would argue that the human body and knowledge of it has allowed more weight divisions. There is plenty of boxers to fill the divisions. A few of them were a necessity IMO; SMW and CW being two.

Big Ears

Littlehorny wrote: »

I could be way off but i think i heard there is 57! There used to be only 8, is there even too many weight divisions? Would love if someone with a lot more experience of boxing thinks of this.
Also catchweights should be banned outright, end of.

There are 17 weight classes, and 4 major organisations. The WBA has 2 Champions at nearly every weight now ('Super' and 'Regular') and an interim champion in most aswell. The WBC occasionally has an interim champions aswell, although they usually have at least half a reason for having one.
So counting up here, the IBF Bantamweight title is the only one I can think of as vacant, and I believe the WBA have 2 champions in 10 divisions. That gives us 77 normal champions, + the WBC have 1 interim champion and the WBA have 15 interim champions, yep......don't worry though, they've got a bout scheduled for the interim WBA minimumweight title, and then they've only Light-Heavy left to fill !
So by my count including interim title holders we've got 93 champions and yes that is ****ing ridiculous.


Now you're wrong about a few things here. There was once only 8 weight classes to an extent. Barring a single LWW title fight in 1946, the Light-Welterweight and Super-Featherweight titles weren't fought for from the mid 30's until 1959, which did leave 8 weight classes. Only during this period was there ever only 8 weight classes. From 1920-1935 there was 10, and previous to 1920 (when the New York Station Athletic Commission was formed) there was all sorts of claimed weight classes for World titles, Jimmy Wilde used to box for the World (and also British) 94lb title, and it wasn't uncommon for top fighters to be claimed champion at all sort of weird weights.

Now as I said the NYSAC was formed in 1920, and as a response the NBA was formed in 1921, and these usually recognised the same champions, but not always !, on top of these organisations you also had the IBU (from 1913-1946) who were a European organisation also claiming World champions. Very frequently the IBU champions would fight the NBA/NYSAC champion/s, and we would end up with a unified World champions, but make no mistake about it, there was more than 1 belt. Before the establishment of these organisations things were even worse, with all sorts of everyone and anyone claiming they were World champions, although just like today with our stupid amounts of belts, when there was a real champion.....we all know who it is and recognise as such (eg. Rigo,Ward, Wladamir).

After the IBU fell along with the nazi's (the 2 became closely related during WW2), the EBU was formed from it, but that wasn't the end of Europe and European countries claiming their own champion. In 1949 Joe Louis retired while holding the unified Heavyweight title, the BBBofC (backed by the EBU) mandated Bruce Woodcock to face American Lee Savold for the vacant title. Woodcock already had a win over Savold, and while both were decent contenders, neither would of been considered one of the top 2 men to contest the vacant title. In retrospect it seems the British were trying to gerrymander themselves to the Heavyweight title.
Meanwhile in America Ezzard Charles boxed Jersey Joe Walcott for the vacant NBA/NYSAC titles, with Charles winning. The Brits plan didn't work when Savold got the better of Woodcock in the title fight (stopping him in 4), and they were made to look even more ridiculous when a comebacking Louis lost a wide decision to Charles, but stopped Savold in 6 rounds, just 9 months later, after which they finally recognised Charles as champion, and resisted any urge to try a cheap trick like that in the future.


Anyway I'm really starting to ramble here, but in truth the best we had was probably when there was just the WBA and WBC. Yes it wasn't just one champion, but anytime the 2 belt holders made a few defences of their title we usually got to see a unification. Then the IBF came along and it's been down hill ever since.

As for weight classes, I'd agree with Walshb that Super-Middleweight, and especially Cruiserweight are necessary. However I would go along with the abolition of some weight classes. I'd particularly focus on the smaller weightclasses, while jumps in weight are more dramatic down here for obvious reasons, fighters in these weight classes are often ignored and receive little recognition and the merger of some classes would fix this.There are less than 300 active fighters at minimumweight, by merging this with Light-Flyweight (either making it 107 or maintaining the 108lb limit), we'd have a much more competitive division with over 800 active fighters, and there would likely be much more recognition for the guys down there.
Same with Super-Flyweight, by abolishing that division you'd flood Flyweight and Bantamweight with some top quality fighters, and make those division even better than they currently are (although Flyweight is cracking at the moment).

I've no problem with catch weight fights in non title fights, in fact these have been around a long time. Our own greatest fighter in Jimmy McLarnin had a catchweight fight with the reigning Flyweight World champion Pancho Villa back in 1925, the bout was held at 121 lbs and the growing McLarnin would of much preferred to fight a few lbs north of there. Most non title fights take place at 'catch' weights tbf, usually a few lbs above where the fighters title fighting weight class is. But when there's a title on the line, the weight class limit should be the weight, simple as. Catch weights with a title at stake are just bull****.

Strongbow10

1)Catchweights allow for some interesting match ups yes, but when I see a major title on the line at a catchweight it really annoys the hell out of me.

If you want to win the middleweight title you fight at the 160lb limit. If you want to be welterweight champ you win it at 147. Light Middleweight at 154 etc etc.

We will more than likely soon have the farce where Floyd Mayweather challenges for the lineal middleweight title but will insist on a clause where Cotto has a 154/155lb limit. And such a stipulation will be allowed to stand.

Now thats probably a bad reference as Cotto isn't a middleweight himself, but the idea of the middleweight championship being contested with such technicalities isn't right.

2) Inconsistencies when it comes to who has to fight mandatories and who doesn't. Personal relationships some fighters enjoy with sanctioning bodies, Mayweather and Vitali with the WBC spring to mind, should not be possible.

Some lesser named fighters win the title the hard way and are shoe horned into mandatory defences whereas bigger names can sit on their title with no fear of losing their status.

Sanctioning bodies will point to the fact that name fighters make them more money, but the notion of the sanctioning body being in the game to make a profit is the single most damaging thing about the sport of professional boxing. There is no integrity and rankings can often be farcical and make no sense (some guys can jump places even though they are inactive/new to the weight class having found success in a lower weight category). Chavez Jr I believe is a top contender at Super Middleweight despite never actually competing at the weight and has actually even turned down title fights at this weight.

walshb

Reminds me of the SRL fight with Lalonde in 1988. He gets to win the LHW crown and makes Donny weigh in at 168 lbs. Ridiculous.

Deiseboy01

Big Ears wrote: »

Not feasible though. Short of a multi-millionaire (or more likley billionaire) buying all the major organisations and merging them together it's not going to happen.

Well either that or the major tv networks (probably the most powerful entity in the sport) coming together to form a World title and only recognising that title without even mentioning the others. This scenario is also never going to happen, there's more money to make (in the short term anyway) from that not happening.

Al Haymon is a major problem in the sport at the moment. There's not that many exciting fights getting made over in America and he's the main reason. Somehow he's able to get his guys massive purses for nothing fights. The only big fights Haymon fighters take part in, is with another Haymon fighter, and that's after tv companies have allowed those fighters to build the fight with 2-3 fights against guys nowhere near their level. It the tv companies also have a lot less money to try and make reasonable fights for non Haymon fighters with what's left.

The BUI and RTÉ are big problems here in Ireland. RTÉ haven't shown a professional boxing card in 3 1/2 years, and it's nearly 4 years since they showed a card where the production wasn't paid for by someone else.
The BUI charge extortionate fees in order to sanction a show and provide officials, this makes it extremely difficult for promoters to hold a show and not make a significant loss (sell outs sometimes result in breaking even).

The BUI problem won't be sorted until a promoter calls them on it and offers an ultimatum of a lower price or else they'll resort to using a different boxing commission (eg. the Maltese one, who have sanctioned bouts in the UK).
The RTE problem can only be solved when Ryle Nugent ****s off.

With regsrd to the cost of buying the sanctioning bodies, I may be wrong but I believe a little while back the IBF had something like 380 grand in their bank account. Surely someone with deep pockets could buy the bodies out and merge them.

Personally I think the likes of Wlad or Floyd should hand back their belts, disregard and disrespect them. Everyone knows they are the champion. Stop paying these leaches and they'll go away.

megadodge

walshb wrote: »

Reminds me of the SRL fight with Lalonde in 1988. He gets to win the LHW crown and makes Donny weigh in at 168 lbs. Ridiculous.

The 'reasoning' behind it was because they were both fighting for the vacant Supermiddleweight title also - at the same time!! - so had to weigh under the supermiddle limit.

walshb

megadodge wrote: »

The 'reasoning' behind it was because they were both fighting for the vacant Supermiddleweight title also - at the same time!! - so had to weigh under the supermiddle limit.

Newly created WBC version....:rolleyes:

unknown13

Big Ears wrote: »

The BUI and RTÉ are big problems here in Ireland. RTÉ haven't shown a professional boxing card in 3 1/2 years, and it's nearly 4 years since they showed a card where the production wasn't paid for by someone else.
The BUI charge extortionate fees in order to sanction a show and provide officials, this makes it extremely difficult for promoters to hold a show and not make a significant loss (sell outs sometimes result in breaking even).

The BUI problem won't be sorted until a promoter calls them on it and offers an ultimatum of a lower price or else they'll resort to using a different boxing commission (eg. the Maltese one, who have sanctioned bouts in the UK).
The RTE problem can only be solved when Ryle Nugent ****s off.

And yet the BUI supply emile tiedt to ref the fights, which is an insult to the sanctioning fee because he is an absolutely awful ref.

My view with the BUI, is that we need a sanctioning body like the ones in America that regulate both pro boxing and mma. Would kill two birds with one stone and would be used on a regular basis.

HigginsJ

Chrissybhoy wrote: »

Some Judges scorecards are ridiculous. Do judges actually get pulled up over scorecards or what way does it work

HigginsJ wrote: »

This for me is the biggest one. If you are a champion fighting at home, short of getting knocked out cold you won't lose your title

One more example to add to the list

dimcoin

I get tired of seeing it on at resuants all the time

walshb

I said it a 100 times, why does a close fight have to have close cards? If many rds were close and very subjective why do the cards have to be close?

Big Ears

walshb wrote: »

I said it a 100 times, why does a close fight have to have close cards? If many rds were close and very subjective why do the cards have to be close?

I have to agree with this, I haven't watched it since seeing it live but Daniel Ponce De Leon vs Gerry Penalosa is a fight that I think of when it comes to close rounds and scoring.
If you were to judge the fight on it's whole, Ponce De Leon might win a close 115-113 type of score, maybe even a SD, and yet I judged that fight something like 120-108 or 119-109 Ponce De Leon. Why ?, because boxing is scored on a round by round basis, and just because one guy is just barely doing enough to win rounds does not mean that ever so often you should give the other guy some rounds too. Each round should be scored independently, regardless of what has come before.

Sometimes that means lopsided scorecards in seemingly close fights. Sometimes it means judges differing with each other by huge margins (occasionally 15-20 points), but as boxing is currently scored, there's nothing actually wrong with that.....at least in fights where we get a lot of close rounds anyway. People giving out about close fights with scoring all over the place detracts from when we do actually get bad scoring and robberies actually do occur.

walshb

That is just it. A close fight is a close fight. Like you I had a fight that was ever so closely fought, Chavez-LaPorte in favour of Chavez by a wide scoring margin. For me he was juts staying a step ahead in almost all the rds, and he got my nod for this. I am fed up with hearing about poor scoring in fights that had many closely fought and difficult to score rds.

Jim Watt himself said that there were a fair few rds in the Smith fight that were close, yet he was still moaning about the wide scores.

megadodge

I agree that you have mentioned this whole issue numerous times and your point is fair, but the problem in this case is that I thought Smith won a hell of a lot more than ONE lousy round. I just cannot fathom that.

Abraham did f*ck all in most of the second half of the fight and I just found it so hard to give him any round after round 5, except the last. In fact, I agreed with Watt's scoring on the whole - and I'm not afraid to disagree with commentators in general as I'm sure ye've noticed. Smith outworked and outlanded AA in each of rounds 6-11 IMHO and quite often seemed to rattle him a bit also. I don't think any fair judge could only say Smith won one round, or AA won eleven rounds. That's ridiculous. AA was taking plenty of shots on gloves and arms, but also took plenty on the target area too, while not even bothering to throw anything in return except a 10 second flurry that the crowd would ooooh and aahhhh at, but that should never win a round unless he did a lot of damage in it - which he didn't.

I don't think this is a case of what you like, it's simply a robbery in the 119-109 case.

walshb

megadodge wrote: »

I agree that you have mentioned this whole issue numerous times and your point is fair, but the problem in this case is that I thought Smith won a hell of a lot more than ONE lousy round. I just cannot fathom that.

Abraham did f*ck all in most of the second half of the fight and I just found it so hard to give him any round after round 5, except the last. In fact, I agreed with Watt's scoring on the whole - and I'm not afraid to disagree with commentators in general as I'm sure ye've noticed. Smith outworked and outlanded AA in each of rounds 6-11 IMHO and quite often seemed to rattle him a bit also. I don't think any fair judge could only say Smith won one round, or AA won eleven rounds. That's ridiculous. AA was taking plenty of shots on gloves and arms, but also took plenty on the target area too, while not even bothering to throw anything in return except a 10 second flurry that the crowd would ooooh and aahhhh at, but that should never win a round unless he did a lot of damage in it - which he didn't.

I don't think this is a case of what you like, it's simply a robbery in the 119-109 case.

I have not seen the fight, and maybe won't because I saw clips and it didn't look all that interesting to me. If there were fairly obvious and clear rds (let us say 4-5 rds) for Smith then 119-109 is bad. Watt did say that a fair few rds were close. Let us say that is 5-6 rds. There's a possible 6 rd points difference straight away. Can I ask, could you make an argument for the rds that you gave to Smith as being awarded to AA? If so, then maybe the 119-109 isn't bad.

megadodge

walshb wrote: »

I have not seen the fight, and maybe won't because I saw clips and it didn't look all that interesting to me. If there were fairly obvious and clear rds (let us say 4-5 rds) for Smith then 119-109 is bad. Watt did say that a fair few rds were close. Let us say that is 5-6 rds. There's a possible 6 rd points difference straight away. Can I ask, could you make an argument for the rds that you gave to Smith as being awarded to AA? If so, then maybe the 119-109 isn't bad.

119-109 IS bad.

That means only ONE round to Smith. There is no way I could reverse that many rounds to Abraham. No way. He just didn't do enough in a lot of rounds.

There's no point discussing it until you've seen it yourself.

Tigersliding

A close round should be a10 9 round. A clear round should be 10 8 or 10 7. We should be also seeing 10 5 rounds when there is a knock down.

walshb

Tigersliding wrote: »

A close round should be a10 9 round. A clear round should be 10 8 or 10 7. We should be also seeing 10 5 rounds when there is a knock down.

10-5 for what? That's a death round!;)

unknown13

Rumours about sparring and what went on in those spars.

djhaxman

Sky and their excuses for PPV. Harrison v Haye was the worst. Now we have Cleverly and Bellew, neither of who are much good.

walshb

In a nutshell the best not meeting the best is what is truly wrong with pro boxing. So infuriating. If it happened the sport would be by and far the best sport on earth. Imagine all the dream fights and potential hum dingers?