Boxing needs saving

[Bart]

Dan Wetzel's latest column is the standard BS the media loves to shove down our throats. Typical Caste garbage. A few paragraphs with my comments.


LAS VEGAS - Everyone wants Saturday's Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar De La Hoya fight to save boxing.


(Not everyone. We certainly like the influx of talented white boxers kickinga$$. Boxing is being dominated by whites , so it needs saving?

)


This could only happen if the excitement and publicity of the fight somehow convinces the most athletic 10- to 12-year olds in North America to give up on basketball, football and baseball and go find the local gym.


(By athletic 10-12 year olds, he means blacks of course. )


Boxing's problems are even greater than just thieving promoters, chaotic sanctioning bodies and long-term health problems - a triumvirate of trouble, no doubt. But it starts with the fact the best American athletes no longer want any part of this sport.


(Best American affletes huh? )


There is no great heavyweight champion anymore, everyone agrees. And that's mainly because someone like Dwyane Wade - all 6-4, 216 pounds of his athletic self - is playing basketball, where he is earning huge money without getting whacked in the head and then stolen from.


(Not everyone agrees with this pompous ninny. Klitschko is great!And oh yeah, Dwayne Wade would thrash all the Euro fighters I'm sure!

)


Mayweather claims as long as America has ghettos, it will have boxers, but that's not necessarily true. The sport of choice in those neighborhoods is no longer boxing. And why would it be?

 

[JD074]

This guy seems to be saying that boxing will never, ever be big in America again because the other sports are immensely better career options than getting hit in the head thousands of times. He may be right. Of course, it doesn't matter much to us. A good white fighter is a good white fighter, regardless of nationality.

 

[jaxvid]

If it's all about making smart choices then he should connect the dots and see that is why there are no whites and have not been in a long time. We have better career options.

But if he was confronted with such an argument he would just say that he meant any athletic blacks OR whites since he didn't specify in his article.

The whole issue is one big ass put down of blacks if you think about it-- their life options are the extremely slim shot at a pro basketaball career or the even slimmer shot at getting their heads bashed for a living. What a sad thing to say about a race.

Why didn't he say that they are too busy working their way out of the ghetto by taking two jobs, studying hard, and getting medical degrees instead of going into boxing? I think we know why.

 

[Iron]

This article is total BS thats all their is to say.This excuse that the big three sports are creaming off the best athletic talent has been played to death the last three or four years to excuse the white takeover of the heavy division.And what this writer fails to understand is such an excuse is only applicable to the heavyweights.What about the 130 to 154 pound weight divisions,guys that dont posess the physical prequisits to compete in the big three sports.

At grass routes level their are more young fighters entering the anual amateur Golden gloves competition than at any time in history,mostly young Blacks and Hispanics.Their's obviously more poverty and a bigger non white underclass in the US than at any time in history,not to mention a bigger prison population so it's not as if the traditional routes into amateur and proffesional boxing have disapeared.

The takeover of the heavy division is a product of what's happening at grass routes level.The U.S similar to basketball send out almost entirely Black squads to to international amateur boxing events,not just Olympics or World championships but other prestigious events like the box cup and world cup where their schooled by tiny nations like Belarus.It's not just at heavy either,but lower weight classes where you feel the thriving athletic talent that exists in the inner city's is not affected by the superior endorsements and opportunities offered to the best of them,unless colleges really do pander to fast 150 pound guys.If Europeans are producing the best, most dominant amateurs,then it only stands to reason that their gonna produce the best professionals.Klitschko,Povetkin and Chagaev were all world class amateurs who won olympic and world championship golds who have now gone on to become dominant pro's.Their are some great African American prospects at junior welter,welter and light middle,divisions in which they still have a strong presence with the European domination not as entrenched in these weight classes partly because the top Russians and Ukranians are not privy to the type of money and promotional opportunities on offer to a young Black prospect in the U.S so they therefore forgoe a proffesional career.Their are some great Russian lightweights,Welters and middles today and as recent as the late nineties who never laced on a glove as a professional, many who won major championships and beat the likes of Mayweather,Dela Hoya,Taylor,lacy etc.

 

[Charles Martel]

After I read the article by Dan Wetzel on yahoo.com, I sent him a message. All of us should send him a few words. If you click in his name in yahoo.com, there is an option to send a message. He's the head sports columnist at yahoo, which explains why their sports page is always so negative.

It can't hurt to let him know what you think.

I saw an article at CBC sports that said boxing is declining in the US but is becoming more popular in Europe and Asia.

 

[white is right]

This article is total BS thats all their is to say.This excuse that the big three sports are creaming off the best athletic talent has been played to death the last three or four years to excuse the white takeover of the heavy division.And what this writer fails to understand is such an excuse is only applicable to the heavyweights.What about the 130 to 154 pound weight divisions,guys that dont posess the physical prequisits to compete in the big three sports.

At grass routes level their are more young fighters entering the anual amateur Golden gloves competition than at any time in history,mostly young Blacks and Hispanics.Their's obviously more poverty and a bigger non white underclass in the US than at any time in history,not to mention a bigger prison population so it's not as if the traditional routes into amateur and proffesional boxing have disapeared.

The takeover of the heavy division is a product of what's happening at grass routes level.The U.S similar to basketball send out almost entirely Black squads to to international amateur boxing events,not just Olympics or World championships but other prestigious events like the box cup and world cup where their schooled by tiny nations like Belarus.It's not just at heavy either,but lower weight classes where you feel the thriving athletic talent that exists in the inner city's is not affected by the superior endorsements and opportunities offered to the best of them,unless colleges really do pander to fast 150 pound guys.If Europeans are producing the best, most dominant amateurs,then it only stands to reason that their gonna produce the best professionals.Klitschko,Povetkin and Chagaev were all world class amateurs who won olympic and world championship golds who have now gone on to become dominant pro's.Their are some great African American prospects at junior welter,welter and light middle,divisions in which they still have a strong presence with the European domination not as entrenched in these weight classes partly because the top Russians and Ukranians are not privy to the type of money and promotional opportunities on offer to a young Black prospect in the U.S so they therefore forgoe a proffesional career.Their are some great Russian lightweights,Welters and middles today and as recent as the late nineties who never laced on a glove as a professional, many who won major championships and beat the likes of Mayweather,Dela Hoya,Taylor,lacy etc.

Eurasia has produced so many top amateurs that are never heard of after the worlds and Olympics. Really when you see some of the top prospects from the old Soviet countries in the US it's a tip of the iceberg.

 

[Triad]

It's definitely a B-level article and he's supposed to be in charge of Yahoo! Sports.

If we keep getting our asses kicked in the Olympic basketball competition then how long will it be before articles saying the best "athletes" are trying other sports. They already use the lack of interest excuse to explain the "athletes" decline in ML Baseball.

I can't see many NBA'ers being dominant in boxing and Mayweather is barely 5'8" and has to bulk up to 150 pounds. His only other pro sport option would be horse jockey.

 

[white is right]

It's definitely a B-level article and he's supposed to be in charge of Yahoo! Sports.

If we keep getting our asses kicked in the Olympic basketball competition then how long will it be before articles saying the best "athletes" are trying other sports. They already use the lack of interest excuse to explain the "athletes" decline in ML Baseball.

I can't see many NBA'ers being dominant in boxing and Mayweather is barely 5'8" and has to bulk up to 150 pounds. His only other pro sport option would be horse jockey.

That always had me thrown for a loop too? So could a giraffe like Sean Kemp be the next great champion?

Most basketball players are way to spindly to be strong heavyweights. I recall Kendall Gill being fat near the end of his NBA career and when he wanted to be a pro fighter he dropped 30 pounds and became a cruiserweight.

 

[Josu]

I think Wetzel has a very short memory.Surely he knows that Eastern European fighters were not allowed to turn professional during the Communist era,so were not able to fight for professional world titles.In the 1960s there were was the case of Laszlo Papp,the great Hungarian who won3 Olympic gold medals at middlewight and junior middleweight.In 1957,shortly after winning gold at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics,he turned professional,but as Hungary did not permit professional boxing,he had to stage his home fights in Vienna,in the neighbouring Austria.He won the European middleweight title,and in 1964,after signing to fight for the world middlewight title,he was forced to retire by the Communist government who denied him an exit visa to fight in the U.S.The fact that he was still at the top of his game at the age of 38,would surely suggest that he was good enough to be world champion.

 

[JD074]

Here's a video of Papp. He's the southpaw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHkm6et-mjA

His amateur career was 301-5-6 and his pro career (which he started at at 31 years old) was 27-0-2.

 

[Charlie]

Richard Hoffer wrote a similar article for the May 7 issue of Sports Illustrated, 'The Fight to Save Boxing'."The lower weight classes are dominated by Hispanic fighters...their fights...marketed almost exclusively in the West, Southwest, and some big cities elsewhere..." (no prob there, with amnesty they can market to Hispanics anywhere) "...heavyweight division...similarly dominated by foreign fighters...but with the added disadvantage that they're not very good." (because they're...)

He goes on to say boxing is a traditional melting pot but globalization has turned it into a nightmare of competing ethnicities. Harder to market to the masses.

Huh? As if boxing has never been sold as ethnic or racial conflict. As if de la Hoya vs. Mayweather wasn't marketed as exactly that, at least in part.

What he may be trying to say is blacks and Hispanics are permitted to root for their home team but whites should pay to watch whoever or whatever, provided the product is good enough. Never considered is the possibility whites may want to root for, and pay to watch, their own man simply because he is their own. And never, ever considered is the possibility non-whites want to see, and pay to see, whites defeated by non-whites. And never, never, ever, ever may the thought occur whites will support whites who are 'foreign' over 'Americans'.

He may be lamenting the fact a reversion to the mean is occurring. How normal is it for any race, including whites, to applaud the exploits of another race and pay for the privilege? Only recently have whites done this (only coincidently with the rise of opinion makers like Wetzel and Hoffer), and it may not last much longer. We have options, like UFC (which Hoffer complains is not only a revenue drain from boxing, but also draws a much younger audience).

It would be interesting to see the pay-per-view breakdown for boxing and MMA in terms of race and age. I'll hazard a guess and say boxing (with non-white contestants as headliners) was 50+% non-white, with the majority of white punters at 40+ years of age. MMA, I guess, would be 80+% white with an average age of 26.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I don't get this either. The small white boxers are better than the small "hispanic" boxers. Would Pavlik or Calzaghe not brutally beat down any boxer with a spanish name they could put in front of them?

I never paid attention to boxing until the UFC popularity peak, and then I only starting learning about boxing because I wanted to learn more about punching. The more I learn, the more I realize how completely overrated the "hispanic" boxers are. The Pavlik fight was a thousand times better than the De La Hoya fight, and he'd beat the crap out of either of those guys, too.

 

[JD074]

Yeah, I don't get this either. The small white boxers are better than the small "hispanic" boxers. Would Pavlik or Calzaghe not brutally beat down any boxer with a spanish name they could put in front of them?

I think he was referring to the lower weight classes. Middleweight and Super-Middlweight are considered middle weight classes, not lower weight classes, as far as I know. I'm not sure where one begins and one ends though. Anybody know?

Needless to say, Middleweight and Super-Middleweight definitely aren't dominated by Hispanic fighters. Taylor, Pavlik, Calzaghe, and Kessler are the top dogs in those two divisions. (And Wright, depending on what he does after he fights Hopkins.)

 

[Charlie]

Courtesy of Ivan Trembow's blog:

UFC's 2006 PPV gross: $222,766,000

HBO Boxing 2006 PPV gross: $177,000,000

#1 demographic for boxing is people over 50

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Article by Mike Freeman of CBS Sports Online claims de la Hoya vs. Mayweather will separate boxing from thuggish UFC. "...the worst league ever invented..." "...brand of low-brow, ghetto-fabulous hooliganism..."

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Kermit Cintron offers to fight UFC champ. Currently IBF World Welterweight Champion, native of Puerto Rico. Once finished tenth at NJCAA Wrestling Championships. Not amphibian.

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Eddie Goldman, host of No Holds Barred, offers WhiteWatch, which will keep tabs on UFC President Dana White. "We examine the tone he has set in the UFC regarding issues of race, class, and nationality..."

 

[whiteathlete33]

maybe Wade should quit basketball and start boxing. Then fight Klitschko and get knocked to silence the critics.