By Manuel Perez: With MMA breathing down the neck of Boxing, I think it’s high time that clinching be disallowed in professional boxing because it’s taking away from the sport. If professional boxing is to compete with Mixed Martial Sports, boxing has to follow amateur boxing and prevent clinching tactics that are used to prevent an opponent from punching. Amateur boxing has long been smart on this subject, prohibiting clinching because they knew that it took away from the sport and kept punches from being thrown.
Professional boxing has been slow to follow the lead of amateur boxing, perhaps because in the past it didn’t matter, since boxing was still able to remain popular even with a certain amount of clinching going on. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. Now, there is a breed of fighters, in particular the older ones, which have begun to clinch often in order to prolong their careers.
Without the ability to go toe to toe with the younger lions round after round, the older fighters often resort to holding in order to give them an extra edge, to slow down the fight and prevent their younger opponent from hitting them as often and wearing them down.
To me, I see this as just as bad to the sport of boxing as a fighter that uses steroids or loads up his gloves with an illegal substance in order to get an edge, because at the end of the day, clinching gives the fighter that clinches a big advantage that the other fighter doesn’t have.
It evens the playing field for the fighter who doesn’t have the power, work rate, energy or skill of the other fighter, but at the same time it drastically takes away from the sport and making it much less interesting to watch.
While watching Shane Mosley defeat Antonio Margarito last weekend, I saw how clinching can change the course of a fight, as Mosley clinched Margarito often as after throwing a shot, preventing Margarito from retaliated. It worked well but it wasn’t boxing for me. It was like a boxing being reduced to wrestling.
Referees are supposed to warn and penalize for this kind of thing, but as most people know, it’s a rule that’s often overlooked by the referees nowadays. Unfortunately, what we get is a fighter slowing the fight down so much that it’s impossible for the fighter less dependent on clinching to win. Power sluggers like Antonio Margarito adversely by this kind of tactic, because without the ability to throw punches in massive numbers or with power, they are hampered.
The person doing the clinching, in this case Mosley, gets a big advantage by being able to prevent their opponent from hitting them as often. I have no problem with older fighters being able to stick around a little longer than they normally would be otherwise, but I think it’s unfair that they should ruin the game by clinching so much.
It takes away from boxing, ruins it for potentially new fans that might be considering getting interested in the sport. I know if I was witnessing a boxing even for the first time in watching Mosley vs. Margarito last weekend, I would have been badly turned off by the sport due to all the clinching that Mosley did in the fight and I probably would go back to MMA, feeling that boxing was a boring sport, filled with grappling and stalling tactics to prevent action. I think it’s about time that professional boxing outlaw clinching, like illegal hand wraps and steroids.
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