One day we will tire of this circus
The public might buy it but they no longer believe it. That is the problem for boxing. The result is just one more strand of the hype, to be consumed, or rejected as part of the show.
Will we get a winner, or another phoney rematch to fix the travesty? Will boxing deliver what is right, or what satisfies the craving for the next big purse?
Those who truly love the sport might ask these questions. The business of boxing cares not one iota for the conundrum. For all the talk of legacy that swirls around every great fighter, no sport plays as fast and loose with posterity and its reputation as boxing.
The fight between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez is a case in point. here was a true legacy contest, a genuinely historic match. The undisputed middleweight title, the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world, belts, pride, status, it was all on the line.
And what is it now? At best a farce, at worst a travesty. Whether one thinks Golovkin won by a lot or a little, most observers accept he won. And even if we err on the side of caution, give enormous benefit of the doubt, erase what we saw, the best that can be mustered is that it was close.
Yet there on the scorecard by ringside judge Adalaide Byrd (below): 118-110 in Alvarez’s favour. Two rounds she gave Golovkin, in one of those draws that only boxing delivers.
Say what you like about Sepp Blatter’s FIFA — and who doesn’t — they didn’t interfere with the football. They messed with the money, the venue, the market, they plundered the game for every last cent to line their own pockets — but they left the 90 minutes alone.
When Germany played Brazil and scored seven goals at the 2016 World Cup, Germany won. The tournament yearned for Brazil in the final at the Maracana, but that did not matter. Nobody tried to flag Germany’s goals offside, nobody raised Brazil’s hand regardless. But boxing does.
Alvarez is bigger box office than Golovkin and commands a greater share of the purse. It isn’t good for trade for him to be stamped second-best. So Alvarez did not lose in Las Vegas on Saturday, even though, to most eyes, he did.
They might as well make these bigmoney fights the best of three if the public are going to be fleeced into financing a rematch by confected controversy. The paying customers — ringside or pay-per-view — made a commitment to a decider, and watched a decider, too, only to be denied it by, what? Incompetence? Corruption? Commercial artfulness?
Nobody is saying the fight wasn’t genuine. Golovkin and Alvarez gave all they had. Yet something reeks.
All that tempers the language directed at Byrd is that if she genuinely was influenced to go rogue on Alvarez’s behalf, she would surely have done it more subtly than this. her scorecard in the middle rounds — it is possible to argue that Alvarez started and finished well — looks like a coded cry for help. Just as some of the verdicts did in Rio De Janeiro in 2016, when at least six of the Olympic senior judges were sent home and a senior executive of the AIBA reassigned, after a string of controversies over the scoring of fights.
Karim Bouzidi, the executive with operational control of the competition, was given other duties mid-Games, although the AIBA would not say what they were. There were tales of collusion between judges, of countries being favoured, winners pre-ordained.
And all this is in amateur fights, supposedly the purest, with only glory and medals at stake. Factor in the fortunes swilling around the professional sport and imagine the potential for corruption when the promoter often has a preferred outcome and the result is still open to being subjectively judged.
Nevertheless, the carnival rolls on. We live in an age of manufactured drama, each event bigger than the last. This is Field Of Dreams made flesh. If you hype it, they will come. And come they do. To grander and grander finales and matchups, to tournaments oversold and overplayed, so that the european Cup is the Champions League, the Paralympians are superhumans, and the fight of the century is a biannual event. They could sell Bozo the Clown versus Floyd Mayweather, given the right marketing ploys. Some would argue they already did. The biggest commercial fight of all time was between the most seasoned, cunning boxer of his generation and a novice, Conor McGregor, a fearsome cage fighter, but no pugilist. And yet it was pitched, successfully, as a contest worth watching, as if Bozo had a puncher’s chance, when smart, genuine punchers had bowed before Mayweather throughout his whole career.
Yet addicted to the show, we watched. Not all of us, but enough to make it worth the protagonists’ while. Boxing at its entry level may struggle. There may be little wealth in the lighter divisions, or at the outset, but for those at the top the rewards are greater than ever.
This is the argument advanced whenever the sport disappoints or enrages. That the critics continue predicting its demise while the purses and commercial gains confirm it as more vibrant than ever. But for how long?
This age, like all others, will pass. And when it does, when we have finished gorging on fake marquee events, boxing will again be a sport to be judged on its merits. And will it be trusted, its inconsistencies indulged?
Golovkin-Alvarez was a great fight, a proper fight to use the vernacular, a fight to redeem the sport from its excesses of hype and empty show.
Instead, where are we? On our way to another rematch, made to erase the travesty of what went before. It’s more boxing shtick. But like any shtick, it eventually gets old.