The Shame of Boxing (Page 2)

In baseball, the standings reflect a quantifiable reality. In boxing, the ratings (which supposedly rank fighters according to ability, from one to ten with a number-one ranking guaranteeing a lucrative fight for the title) are at best impressionistic, and at worst totally corrupt--sold for cash. Everyone in boxing knows that the three sanctioning bodies that issue the ratings--the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council and the International Boxing Federation--have no legitimacy. They force champions to pay huge sanction fees for the right to defend their titles. They strip champions of their titles if they don't go along with the sport's back-room politics. They manipulate the ratings and exclude merit from consideration. They assign incompetent judges to fights. They are more like bandits than regulators.

In basketball, the score is obvious. The ball has to go through the hoop. In boxing, nothing is clear; victory and defeat are matters of interpretation by judges. A number-one rating can be auctioned. Fighters sometimes don't get paid what they are promised in a contract. Nobody audits the money. There are conflicts of interest that would never be tolerated in predominantly white sports like tennis, golf or stock-car racing.

In theory, a manager is supposed to negotiate the most favorable economic terms for his fighter, while the promoter is supposed to make the largest possible profit on the event. But there have been dozens of fights in which Carl King managed both fighters while the match was promoted by his father, Don King, boxing's dominant promoter since 1974, accumulating a net worth of $200 million along the way. Bob Arum has also had similar conflicts of interest.

If the promoter's son represents both fighters, what chance does the boxer have of getting paid fairly? In addition, most of King's fighters tell me they are not permitted to have their own lawyers or accountants. Mike Tyson is now suing King, claiming his co-managers were actually employees of King, whose loyalty was to him, not Tyson.

I tolerated this institutionalized avarice and cynicism for years because of the occasional artistry of a Sugar Ray Robinson or a Muhammad Ali. Or the occasional classic match like Ray Leonard versus Tommy Hearns or Ali versus Frazier. Robinson was my perfect fighter. He had speed, grace, heart, punch, style, intelligence, fluidity, character and will. He was the Einstein of the geometry of angles and distances. He was to boxing what Shakespeare was to playwriting.

In 1998 I co-produced a documentary film about Robinson's life for HBO and learned that Ray hated boxing. He killed an opponent, Jimmy Doyle, in 1948, and after that he disliked the thing he was a genius at doing. "It's just a job, I do not enjoy it," he once told Edward R. Murrow. I spent a lifetime looking for another Robinson, but never found his likeness. Knowing now how badly his health had deteriorated and how he felt about his gift, I wonder why I was looking so hard.

This past June I saw boxer Beethoven Scottland get killed during a fight in New York City because of medical and regulatory negligence. I've seen other fighters crumble into a fatal coma, most famously Benny "Kid" Paret in 1962. But this one got to me because I felt it was especially preventable. The political hacks who rule the New York boxing commission failed to perform their job. The doctors present failed to intervene when it was obvious that a one-sided beating was going on. Brooding about this needless death, I reached the internal tipping point, where my guilt started to outweigh my pleasure. I now feel that boxing must be cleaned up, or I don't want to watch it anymore.

I have known a lot of fighters and liked almost all of them. They have no pension, no union, no health insurance, no voice. For every George Foreman who gets rich, there are 1,000 you never hear of who end up with slurred speech, failing memory and an empty bank account.

I once asked a gallant old champion from the 1950s, Boston's Tony DeMarco, why so many ex-fighters I knew were such modest, quiet, sweet men, appreciative of any attention.

"Because we've had all the anger punched out of us," Tony replied.

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