One of Sport #1’s most successful athletes, a champion, is under serious investigation for match fixing. He has inextricable ties to the mob and many shady match results. An investigation is launched in that sport which reveals 45 possible fixed matches in the last five years, matches involving some of its biggest stars.

A google search for [Sport #2, Gambling, Scandal] brings up nothing for 10 google pages except mentions of Sport #1. There has been only slight whiffs of match fixing in decades and none involving Sport #2’s superstars.

Nevertheless the conventional wisdom still prevails that Sport #1 is clean and Sport #2 is dirty. Even people who love the sport, myself included, engage in the stereotyping (see this post) and the assumptions. Of course as Tim from Ring Report – perhaps the Internet’s best boxing analysis site – revealed in his comment to my post, Sport #1 is tennis and Sport #2 is boxing.

How could this be? How could I have been so prejudiced and so scurrilous to boxing, a sport that I love. So stuck in the 1950’s so Archie Moore so The Harder They Fall. They were over 50 years ago! The answers are numerous and complex. For purposes of the argument my reasoning is based strictly in an American understanding of the situation.

Reason 1) It’s embedded in our sporting memory. I’ve grown up believing boxing’s corruption to be endemic and unbreakable. It’s what you’re father tells you. It’s what the talking heads repeat.

Reason 2) It’s embedded in the sport’s popular culture image. Nearly every boxing-centric movie made post-The Harder They Fall involves some sort of fight fixing or shady dealings: Rocky (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Diggstown (1992), The Great White Hype (1996), Hurricane (1999) and many more.

Films with auxiliary boxing plots like Pulp Fiction (1994) and Snake Eyes (1998) also highlight the corruption. Interestingly the two boxing films that don’t show involve a shady underside both involve female pugilists: Girlfight (2000) and Million Dollar Baby (2005).

Reason 3) At the same time boxing has always reveled in the above popular culture role and doesn’t deny it’s romantic underbelly. The sport actively separates itself from the general sporting world. How does it do this? Most practically, it refuses to form an all-encompassing sporting body. One with pensions, transparent wages, a player’s union, a commissioner/czar figure, and standardized rules.

Documentaries still romanticize the sweaty gyms, the boxers’ shady pasts, and the beauty of contained violence. Unlike other American professional sports boxing does not deny Las Vegas or the gambling world. Nearly all fights are held in casinos, the betting lines are known and discussed, and the casino’s money-making aspects are not denied.

Reason 4) The sport of boxing has positioned itself as an outsider in the American sports universe. This has been done through the reasons outlined in #3 but also via its insistence on showing its biggest events on pay-per-view and on subscription television. Boxing’s biggest champion, HBO, is a Time Warner company – not a part of the the major television outlets: CBS, NBC, Disney-ABC, and Fox – and doesn’t always receive the sports summary broadcast love it deserves.

Reason 5) Boxing’s participants are deemed outsiders by the American consciousness. Boxing is not offered in American high schools and it’s not a sanctioned collegiate sport. To participate you must find the proverbial dingy boxing gym, most are located in urban areas, or start fighting while a member of the armed forces. Gone are the days of noble boxing Princeton and Harvard undergrads. The educational and collegiate infrastructure will not help you learn how to box. The easy (and often wrong) assumption to make is that boxers are uneducated or did not go to school at all.

Boxers also represent a distinctly different demographic than the general American public. For example our 2008 Olympic Boxing team consists of seven African-Americans, three Mexican-Americans, one Yemeni-American. None are from particularly wealthy backgrounds. And these are the sport’s domestic athletes. So many of today’s great fighters come from non-G8 nations: Mexico, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Nigeria. Countries Americans don’t imagine to be showered in gold.

Conclusion: You have a sport that both does not want to be a part of and is not allowed into the mainstream. At this point, its fans don’t want mainstream acceptance either. Both the fans and the sport itself are rebellious towards the sporting status quo; a status quo that the media outlets, the film industry and pop culture repeat to us over and over again is fair, above-the-board, avoiding the temptations of Las Vegas, trying to rid itself of chemical and corrupting scourges, and pure as the driven snow. Boxing is the rebel and the outsider to this organizational status quo: it has no governing body, no standards and must therefore be corruptible and wrong.

We assume the participants in this organizationally-rebellious sport to be uneducated, poor, and from a minority background. A demographic that, of course, will be more likely to be corruptible. Clearly dirtier than the demographic that plays tennis: rich, white, worldly, educated. Somehow, though, it hasn’t worked out that way.

Boxing is the sport without betting scandals. It’s the sport without performance-enhancing scandals. It’s the sport that doesn’t gouge tax-payers for $1BN stadiums. It’s the sport without commonplace severe paralysis injuries. It’s the sport where referees aren’t indicted for fixing games.

Maybe it’s time to do some rethinking. Maybe boxing is a lot purer and a lot more civilized than any of us want to give it credit. Maybe it’s the other sports that need fixing.

Again, if I’m wrong please let me know in the comments.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why Do We Think Boxing Is Dirtier Than Tennis Despite the Facts?

My response might as well also be a response to today’s wire service reports that disgraced NBA ref Tim Donaghy’s attorney told investigators that relationships among officials, coaches and players “affected the outcome of games.” Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s a big statement.

Click here or scroll down to see my response.

But first is up Mike from www.fpsrantings.com’s comment to my post:

We could say the same thing for boxing. The fights are, after all, scripted as well (I smell home cooking every time). Pro basketball may have its share of point-shaving controversies and wacky referees but at the end of each game, the team with the most points win. There’s no need for a judge to decide.

Boxing, on the other hand, is controlled by said judges. Knocking down an opponent is not a guarantee for a win. A judge and his subjective perceptions determine a match’s outcome–not performance. Boxers have their guaranteed pay as well, so losing and getting money isn’t exclusive to professional basketball.

And the injuries? The drama isn’t for boxing alone, and to presume so is erroneous. Who are we to say that there is no drama behind a basketball player’s injury when we don’t know what happens behind closed doors? I’ve read so many interviews about NBA players who could not seem to get out of the mental anguish brought by an injury despite having completely recovered.

I’ve even heard of a pro basketball player in the Philippines whose life was drastically changed because of a freak spinal injury during a game that not only affected his career, but his entire life as well.

Just because boxing is a full-contact sport (they say basketball is one too because of its roughness), it doesn’t mean its “drama” is real compared to other sports that don’t involve beating the living crap out of each other through the use of fists.

I’m just sayin’. ;)

My response:

Thanks for the comment Mike.

You’re not wrong in saying there’s not home cooking, dives, fixed fights and other nasty problems in boxing. It is and probably always will be the most corrupt and corruptible sport. Although tennis is coming close.

For me to suggest that shady judges, craven promoters, and casino cash don’t sometimes decide fights is disingenuous at best. But as a fight fan I can accept the unfairness and the sport’s apparent crookedness because of the great equalizer of the knockout and because boxing never pretends to be above the fray.

Boxing never boasts of its innocence. The sport never insists that things are fair, that the judges aren’t corrupt, and that money doesn’t matter. You as a boxing fan must accept this complex and paradoxically unsporting sporting climate. If you remain naive then you will ultimately be jilted, feel betrayed, and leave your love sullied by her numerous peccadilloes.

But at least the sins are out in the open and at least there is the promise of a knockout, the promise that the playing field might somehow be leveled. No judge can outscore a knockout punch, no referee can pretend it didn’t happen.

The NBA is my favorite team sport and I have been a die hard New York Knicks fan since birth. Being a Knick fan doesn’t preclude me from loving the game. I watch as many games as possible and have in the past subscribed to the all-consuming beauty of the NBA League Pass.

That said, the playoffs always crush me with their pre-ordained scripts, corrupt officiating, and unimaginable double standards. There are too many examples to cite but as a Knick fan we’ve been aided and harmed by more than a few. The Heat bench clearing incident, the Hubert Davis four-point play, the inability to ever call a foul on Michael Jordan, Knick Bavetta.

David Stern and the NBA’s response to the above was always self-righteous sanctimony. “How dare you call our impartiality into question.” “What motivation do we have to be corrupt?” “We are perfect and above judgment.” “Our league is fair.”

But it’s not. The best teams don’t always win. Foul calls, missed foul calls, allowed rough play, technical fouls, and suspensions all drastically change the outcome of games. Referees decide who wins to a greater extent than even the players. Of course the pre-ordained team still must hit the shots. And that doesn’t always happen. But for example, how confused must the Hawks have been in Game 7 when the same drive-to-the-hoop style that they won with in Atlanta suddenly elicited no whistles in Boston?

So when I say that the drama of the NBA is closer to the drama of the WWE it’s directly related to their laughable insistence of their personal innocence and sainthood. The WWE denies with a wink and a nod but the NBA does it with heavy-handed condescension. Boxing reveals their warts, treats you like an adult, and insists you accept them.

Again thanks for the comment,
Michael

Am I off base again? As always, please let me know.

Photo Sources: Newscom.com

Post from: EveryJoe

Boxing, WWE, NBA: Drama, False Outcomes, Corruption, and Hypocrisy

I recently updated my b5 profile with the intention of explaining how www.jabandgrapple.com could cover both the scripted fun of pro wrestling entertainment and the unexpected life-threating tension of professional boxing. My answer wasn’t that they both take place in rings and involve some sort of combat.

No, my explanation was that they are bookends of the sporting world with everything else existing in between their emotional bounds. Friday night was evidence of this evocative breadth. WWE’s SmackDown and ESPN’s Friday Night Fights were broadcast simultaneously and my Motorola DVR only allowed me to watch one at a time while taping both. I was forced to delve into both without distraction.

First up was the glorious costumed cabaret fun of SmackDown. The Undertaker was trying to take revenge out on a supposedly wheelchair-bound lady. People were fired, lives were affected, fear, trouble, mayhem, betrayal and loss were the pervasive themes.

We all know, however, that the situations were fake. That in the end the performers’ lives aren’t affected as far as career longevity and/or actual intended danger. Sure, unexpected tragedies can and have occurred but The Undertaker’s choke slam really isn’t endangering opponents; the Great Khali wasn’t really bleeding profusely from the mouth a few weeks ago. Their career paths are decided by scriptwriters and their salary, however modest, isn’t dependent on them winning.

Once SmackDown ended I switched over to the very real career arc of Chris Byrd, a 37-year-old who had just lost 37 pounds in an attempt to compete at the light heavyweight level. Things didn’t work out that well for the former heavyweight champion as he was beaten badly and knocked out in the ninth round. Byrd then deliriously apologized to his wife and handsome young son; he felt he had let them down.

The drama was real, the pain evident, and the tragedy too much to bear. Here was a man who put his life on the line in the ring and couldn’t bear the failure that he wrongly perceived himself to be.

Shortly after the fight doctors diagnosed Byrd with a separated shoulder and administered painkillers. Then the situation nosedived. His wife explained to ESPN, “They gave him Valium and morphine and we couldn’t wake him up,” she continued. “I was so scared. We had to rush him to the hospital.”

Byrd was revived late Friday night and returned home but the psychological pain will not end. Byrd will presumably not fight again at least not on the same championship level he was accustomed. He understands that he should retire.

His opponent Shaun George added after the fight “There’s going to come a point where you have to give it up. That’s the hard part because you love the sport. It’s sad for anybody, but especially someone like Byrd who is a two-time heavyweight champion.”

For me, the pathos was too much to bear, especially after watching its polar opposite at SmackDown.

So I turned the channel to the end of the Boston Celtics-Cleveland Cavs playoff game. I love the NBA but after the Byrd fight it seemed so superficial and so far removed from man’s essential struggle. So scripted and so much closer to pro wrestling than what I had just viewed.

Lives aren’t going to be affected by the Celtics loss no matter how angsty Kevin Garnett portrays himself; no matter how aloof and affected Ray Allen appears to be. They’ll pull in their guaranteed million dollar contract accept their loss, continue performing to David Stern’s script, move on and compete until their bodies can’t move. Just like Bruno Sammartino, just like Hulk Hogan and just like Ric Flair.

If Chris Byrd were to go back in the ring he might be killed, the fact that he’s still an elite boxer doesn’t matter. His skills just aren’t elite enough.

Think I’m off base? Comment below and tell me what you think.

Photo Source: Newscom.com

Post from: EveryJoe

The Real Drama of Boxing vs. the Fake Drama of the WWE and the NBA