“Uncle Tom” Boxing Fans, and Writers

Great BoxingScene.com article by Dr. Peter Edwards, on what ails the once proud sweet science. If you're a fan of MMA or boxing (or both, like me), then you want to read this article.

Some good points:

• Promoters are staging "more pay-per-views than ever before," at $40-50 a pop.


• The "overpopulation of alphabet title belts" means that there are too many champions of too many organizations, and there are few, if any unified titles. He goes on, "most fighters don’t even care about title belts and usually the best fighter within his respective weight division has no titles."

His prescription, "There needs to be a major overhaul of the sport. Some higher power needs to take over and regulate the industry by eliminating most of the titles in each weight class, force fighters to compete at least three times per year, eliminate most pay-per-view events and even eliminate some of the weight classes to force more competitive fights, rather than have fighters hiding from each other with 4 pounds between them."

Makes sense to me. I grew up watching Ali, Larry Holmes, Ken Norton, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, etc. - all on free TV. I hope boxing will come back, because when it's on, there's nothing sweeter.