By Gerardo Granados: Once up on a time I would believe anything that I saw on TV or the newspapers, but now I can see how boxing politics and people behind the screen can influence our opinion.
The Pay Per View was a great addition to prize fighting and cable TV allowed fighters to have a lot of promotion while increasing the purses the boxing stars earned on title bouts, but somewhere in the middle the quality of match making changed. And while everything seems great to the casual fan eye the hard core fight fan might be able to tell the difference between the past and present match making.
An old friend of mine told me that pro boxing is quite boring; he said he used to watch it but he noticed that it aint different from what he saw a long time ago. He told me boxing is predictable and repeats itself over and over again. Of course I disagreed with him because boxing is great and prize fighting can’t be compared to other professional sports; the danger and brutality of prize fighting brings feelings that set you up ready to battle.
The feeling will renew each and every single time you see two pride lions fighting for supremacy and those who can’t understand that feeling should focus on ballet and stay away from prize fighting.
But what if my friend is correct? Is Danny Garcia the only one or is he just the last one of the belt holders who never had the intention to defend his title against the deserving hungry Mandatory Challenger?
To me when Peter Quillin vacated his belt it was shameful and not just disappointing. When you see young lions like Viktor Postol been avoided for so long it makes me wonder if the business side of pro boxing has taken over the competitive side and now the macho attitude of old time boxers is simply gone.
But, we just have witnessed a six hundred million dollar bout last month, so are things really that bad? Or it just proves that casual fans will buy anything they are told to be a great fight.
Well, if Danny Garcia had the intention to defend his belt against Viktor Postol then he should have signed a contract in which a penalty should have been agreed if Garcia failed to comply with the step aside agreement. After all he was allowed to fight against Rod Salka and Lamont Peterson before his mandatory. The business side seems to be more important for the former WBC belt holder but should the WBA strip him too or is it that now a “big name” gets to impose all his conditions even to the boxing organizations.
Miguel Cotto has been clear about his intentions to fight against his mandatory challenger but the WBC seems to have no intention to force him to defend his strap against Gennady Golovkin. After all if Cotto was forced he could just vacate, ask for a step aside agreement or even been promoted to Emeritus Champion (whatever that means, Sergio Martinez was promoted in the past). But then how is Golovkin supposed to have a big name victory on his resume if he is avoided?
I don’t know if it is possible but I want to ask the reader if it could be possible to ban step aside agreements and improve competition if the four major boxing organizations agreed to not to give a shot at a title to the ones who vacated to avoid their mandatory challenger, or failed to comply on a single opportunity step aside agreement and not let them take a shot at their world title (any version) for a full one calendar year.
Did the readers knew who Danny Garcia was before he fought against Erik Terrible Morales? If Garcia had been avoided by Morales would Danny still be waiting for a shot at the title?
My friend asked me if I knew how to improve the competitive side of pro boxing and I told him that “all I know is that I won’t follow boxing divas in the near future”. But what about the reader will you?
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