By Simon Hirst: Much has been said of how big fights that the public want are avoided for whatever reason. Some of these reasons are fighters wanting too much money, other are fighters are unwilling to travel. The fact there are four world titles makes it easier for champions to defend their titles against those who are unworthy or of an easier standard. There are challengers getting world titles ahead of those who are more worthy because they’ve taken a easier route.
For all this to change, a lot of changes would have to be made. Organisations would have to co-operate or possibly become defunct, the rankings system should become a lot more strict with perhaps only those in the top five being eligible for a world title shot. Of course, this is not going to happen, but it would be good for boxing as a whole if it did happen.
Unlike UFC, in boxing, anyone can fight anyone. You wouldn’t see the champion of UFC against the champion of another MMA organisation unless one left. Boxing should use this to their advantage, with the biggest names fighting each other. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Before I name names, there are those fighters who are willing to fight the big fights, who believe in reputation over money.
They say to judge a sport, you need to look at its top division, in which case for boxing should be heavyweight. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that things aren’t good at the moment in that division and anything over light-heavyweight isn’t very exciting at the moment.
I mainly look to the middleweight division where I see very exciting potential fights, but non are being made. You list the individuals and it’s amazing. You have Kelly Pavlik, Arthur Abraham, Carl Froch, Jermain Taylor, Mikkel Kessler, Lucian Bute, Paul Williams, Chad Dawson and Bernard Hopkins. All these fighters are roughly around a weight that a fight could be made, catchweight if it had to be. I appreciate some of these fight have happened, but in the current schedule of things, not one of these fighters are fighting each other. Think of how much drooling their would be from boxing fans if we saw some fo the following fights:
Paul Williams vs Kelly Pavlik
Kelly Pavlik vs Arthur Abraham
Chad Dawson vs Bernard Hopkins
Lucien Bute vs Mikkel Kessler
Mikkel Kessler vs Carl Froch
Lucien Bute vs Carl Froch
Arthur Abraham vs Jermain Taylor
Mikkel Kessler vs Bernard Hopkins
In the current climate of the economy, fans want value for their money and they aren’t going to buy a fight of Pavlik fighting some unknown fighter in a voluntary defence when the bookies’ odds of him winning are 1/50. It’s not what fans want to see, it does nothing to enhance Pavlik’s reputation except it means he holds onto the belt for another few months.
I think this is where organisations need to step in and force the best fights to happen. Too many, if not all major organisations are happy for their champion to fight bums. It’s far too easy to get a fighter to win a world title and have him cherry pick his own opponents to the dislike of those deserving and the fans.
I appreciate this isn’t going to change much because the changes that need to be made are almost impossible to happen. The only way it could happen is if fans were to rebel against it, not buy fights and abandon ticket sales. The only way to make promoters and organisations realise is by hitting their wallets. I doubt this will happen. I just want to re-emphasis that there are some in boxing where the best are more than happy to fight the best in big fights, this article is just targeting those promoters and fighters who don’t.
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