Sportsfrog.com

Call me sentimental.

My interest in Boxing developed when I was in the vicinity of 12 or 13-years old. Give or take. Staying up late to watch Wilfredo Benetiz versus Sugar Ray Leonard, Holmes -v- Norton, Hagler -v- Antuofermo, Cuevas -v- Espada. On and on and on. What little wages I could muster as a caddie at the local golf club in summers, or as an ice cleaner at the local curling club in winters, often went toward paying for subscriptions to boxing magazines; Ring, Fight Beat, Inside Boxing, you name it; most no longer exist but I kept my collection in near mint condition and dove into them daily. Via back page ads, I found pen-pals from as far away as Scandinavia and New Zealand; fantastical distances to the mind of a kid in small-town Nova Scotia. This is what people did before the Internet. It developed into a small circle of die-hards, including this one Canadian kid that they tolerated, or indulged, each of whom mailed paraphernalia to each other and typed or hand-wrote chatter about our various lives. The immediacy has changed, as has the manner in which one composes messages. As a running theme and point of contention, we maintained our own personal rankings in every weight division; this was the constant. One old chap, a former middleweight himself from a coal mining town in England, once sent me an authentic fight poster of the Alan Minter -v- Marvin Hagler card at Wembley. I still have it, preserved as best I can, framed. The best at this incessant correspondence, by far, was a gentleman named Arild Andersson from a small town in Norway. What became of him, I never found out. On occasion, over the last few years, I have nostalgically taken shots at trying to find him online but inevitably draw blanks.

There was a thrill when, coming home from school, my Mom would inform me that “You have a letter from Arild”; oddly wrapped in brown packing paper, containing any world of wonders, and type-written pages of his own rankings that he sent out monthly to his two dozen or so global correspondents; a worn typewriter ribbon that fought to make an impression on the onion skin pages; or a faint impression carbon copy. Meticulously, I kept my own world rankings and had the childish audacity to contribute to this small ground-mail community hopeful opinions and values of fighters I could but only read about; being sure to include any souveigner from past or present; fight cards or even newspaper clippings from the local papers so that somewhere out there in a world so distant to me there would be someone who went to their mail-box and found the same sort of Christmas present marvel that made my days.

Internet communities, such as this one, are born out of that same notion. Blogging ages before blogging. Although we’ve since Super-Sized it and “immediatized” everything.

I grew up, turned to Major Junior Hockey, discovered girls, literature, art, substances, life; y’know, the important stuff. And Boxing faded to me. It’s not an accident that my interest in the sweet science receded as Don King and Bob Arum became more prominent in the sport and Boxing was torn asunder by contractual stables; the two sides of a narrow spectrum much like political parties, divided by greed, profit and arrogance. And then along came the IBF and the sport took a wrong turn onto the highway of absurdity. Three Heavyweight Champions of the World? This didn’t work for me. When Muhammad Ali declared “I am The Greatest!” he was not in some embarrassing Rickey Henderson fashion claiming to be the best of all time. No. When Ali spoke those words he did so with great respect to being the world champion boxer in the largest of weight classes. Years later, when Ali was watching a very young Mike Tyson, he said “Maybe he’ll have a shot at becoming The Greatest one day.” For, to Ali, whoever was the champion of the world was therefore The Greatest.

“The Greatest” is a singularity. If there is anyone that Boxing should learn from it is Muhammad Ali.

Now, as an old guy residing a lifetime away from where I first loved the sport, I find myself being drawn back into it. Perhaps it is the effect of having too many televisions in the house. Or perhaps it is because the skill level appears to me, a mere observer, to have increased considerably in recent years. The problem, however, remains. And that is a lack of singularities. Or, seen opposite, a stagnation of divides. As we have seen, Mixed Marshall Arts became a rival threat to the Boxing world and, perhaps in a fitting parallel to ground mail versus the internet, managed to split itself into more cells over a few small years than Boxing managed to do in decades. A purist may tell you that both have been cynically diluted.

Call me sentimental. Or idealistic. Perhaps both. And while I know well the improbability of a unified world boxing sanction, I believe it is the only answer to the sport’s survival as a world class athletic realm. Yes, of course, one World Welterweight Champion means less fights than three World Welterweight Champions. Yet less profit now may well lead to greater profit down the road if the sport can reposition itself to the level it once held. And profit does not have to be about financial gain.

Consider this. In 1975, if you walked out on to your local street and started asking people “Who is the Heavyweight Champion of the World?”, everyone would give you the correct answer. Today? Not a chance. What does that tell you?