THE SQUARE RING Oct.9, 2014 By James Wellington Jeeves III VISIT keepboxing & Brookies Sports Bureau , Phuket Thailand When boxing was king almost every popular crooner (that would be male singers) recorded a song called “Accentuate the Positive.” Those crooner’s included Bing Crosby, Perry Como, composer Johnny Mercer and the Andrews Sisters. The chorus instructed... Youve got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative And latch on to the affirmative Dont mess with Mister In-Between. In covering the boxing of the 2000s or for that matter the 1990s that would be great advice. One minor problem is finding a positive about boxing. It would be like finding an honest politician. Mr. Phelps of Mission Impossible wouldn’t touch that assignment with a ten-foot pole. Needle in a haystack? Piece of cake. Those that try to proselyte boxing run into a plethora of arguments most based on either fact or the presumption of same. Boxing’s just like wrestling. It’s fixed. Try to handle that baby. Is boxing fixed? Not really but managers, promoters and trainers try to match “their” boxers up with someone they can beat. Cable networks and Al Hayman shy away from competitive matches for their boxers like A Rabs from Bacon. Technically matches aren’t fixed but then there is the devil in the details. Comedian Norm Crosby was called the Master of Malapropisms so, taking a page from his book, Boxing is patrusional or in Ingles delusional. Boxing either doesn’t understand or is in denial. In Europe and Asia with competitive matches the sport flourishes while in the US of A it’s deader than Kelsey’s reproductive organ. Por Que? Boxing writer Scott Christ thinks, Boxing has so devalued itself for so long, crushingly abusing its own image constantly for decades now, that its not going to be the easiest sell to bring people back. The fact is that boxing has been devaluing itself most lately on Pay-per-View. Hey suckers, pay to get fleeced! Would network TV solve the problem? Probably not as Christ writes, Just saying ‘were on network TV now!’ doesnt guarantee eyeballs, and thus, revenue and money to keep the whole thing moving forward. Promoter Kathy Duva has floated the story that come 2015 boxing will be back on the NBC TV Network. Can a promoter be believed? Depends on the day. Under the Duva narrative boxing Guru Al Hayman has offered $20 million to NBC to air 24 dates (which is a lot more than the Lord of the Manor paid for his dates on Old Geezer dot com. Should such an arrangement be made, both Showtime and HBO would be left scrambling for boxers. Showtime has only two Mayweather fights left on their contract and it is doubtful they would be willing to offer Mayweather another long term blockbuster deal. Thanks to Oscar De La Hoya and his new BBF Bob Arum both Bernard Hopkins and Canelo Alvarez have jumped to HBO. Hopkins (55-6-2) will meet Sergey Kovalev (25-0-1) on November 8 with Alvarezs debut delayed until May of 2015 possibly on Stinko de Mayo against Miguel Cotto on PPV. Alvarez was supposed to appear in his first HBO card on December 6 but that’s been scraped due to injury. Touting the Alvarez-Cotto fight De La Hoya said... It will do 2 million on PPV. Talk about delusional. Mayweather-Maidana 2 did about 700,000 with other PPV’s down all year. To even consider 2 million is stupid. Yes, Canelo Alvarez is considered to be a walk on water person by the Mexican fight fans but that probably doesn’t equate to 2 million buys. The Spinners have made Miguel Cotto the next greatest thing after he beat Sergio Martinez. Anyone with any boxing knowledge knows that Martinez was a shot fighter with no wheels. Like all athletics when a boxer’s legs go he goes. One challenge that boxing must meet and conquer is the civil war that’s going on. It’s a war between promoters, cable networks and fight fans. Fight fans lose. The Alvarez move to HBO illustrates the network war. Several weeks ago, Oscar came to us at Showtime with a multi-fight proposal on Canelos behalf, said Stephen Espinoza of Showtime. It was a multi-year proposal that he said would keep Canelo at Showtime. It was a three-year deal, and it was a total of seven fights. The first fight was the Joshua Clottey fight. He said that that was the only fight that they would accept, and we accepted it. Oscar? No verbal agreement. I am obviously doing what Canelo is asking of me. Canelo has expressed many months ago that he would love to explore the possibility of fighting on HBO, and as his promoter, I have to obviously do whatever is possible to grant his wishes. Bush Waa! HBO’s in the driver’s seat the rest of the year starting with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (30-0 with 27 KO’s) against Marco Antonio Rubio 59-6 (51 KO’s) on October 18. Golovkin as everyone knows is a terrific puncher. Rubio since losing to Chavez Jr. has run off a string of 6 on the trot including 4 KO’s. This will definitely be a “wing-ding-doodle” of a fight. The supporting fight between Nonito Donaire (33-2) and Nicholas Walters (20-0) should be one of those don’t go to the fridge” fights. The pair have combined for 41 “big wins by KO from 59 fights. Walters from Jamaica has cooled 17 of his last opponents. Last out in Macao Walters took out Vic Darchinyan in 5 knocking him down 3 times. On November 8, HBO has Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2) against Sergey Kovalev (25-0-1). Kovalev has great power with 23 KO’s from 26 fight BUT he’s in against Hopkins who won’t allow him room to punch. Hopkins hasn’t been in a entertaining fight this century. The announcer’s will marvel at his age and his skill”. On November 22 is the PPV of Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri from Macau. HBO ends November with the terrific Terence Crawford defending his WBO lightweight title against Raymundo Beltran (29-6) which should be a showcase for Crawford in his hometown of Omaha. One fact about boxing is that there is no Mister In-Between. The late baseball manager Billy Martin was asked what was his managerial style. Well one-third of the team loves you, one-third hate you and one-third aren’t sure. I try to keep the one-third that hate me away from the other two thirds. That’s boxing today as one-third of the sporting public like it, one-third hate it and one-third aren’t sure. Boxing’s got to keep the haters away from the not sure. That may be a call for Mr. Phelps and Mission Impossible. Light up a cigar and pop a Corona because Cheewit dee Khruo.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 19:23:04 +0000
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