Boxing
contenders in decline
Joseph
Serna
I
miss my golden age of boxing.
The late ’80s to the early part of this century provided entertainment
year in and year out. I always knew come mid-September and early spring, there
would be at least one pay-per-view fight on my cable bill, and generally, it
was worth
it.
From the heaviest to the lightest weight classes, names like Evander Holyfield,
Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr. and Oscar
De La Hoya gave me upsets, knockouts, concert-style entrances and plenty of
high-pitched sound bites.
While all four are actually still in boxing, none of them deserve pay-per-view
fights, or even the pre-fight hype some of them still receive.
Holyfield
just makes me sad. While back in the day
he may have taken a beating, you knew at
least his will alone wouldn’t let
him take that punishment without returning
the favor. These days, he just stands in
an old, uncooperative body that can’t
react the way he wants it to.
Tyson is out of the picture, and has been since his pre-cannibalistic, ear-biting
days.
Jones Jr. and De La Hoya are a different story.
While Jones Jr. seems to have the talent, he just doesn’t care anymore.
He had his reign at the top for years. He knocked out hand-picked opponent
after hand-picked opponent, never inching anywhere near danger.
After meeting his match to Antonio Tarver, twice, he has quietly faded into
the background.
I haven’t respected De La Hoya since high school. He believed his own
hype enough to challenge someone bigger, stronger and much more disciplined.
His mistake, which cost him a devastating loss, ending with a body-punch knockout
to Bernard Hopkins, was long over due.
He should have kept running after the Felix Trinidad fight years ago.
At any given time, there was a pool of contenders that could steal a belt from
another. Trinidad, Fernando Vargas and
“
Sugar” Shane Mosley were all within pounds of each other, and all were
at the top of their games.
Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Michael Moorer and even to some extent, Andrew Golata
and David Tua provided a decent fight or a knockout. Most may be in boxing,
but they are fragile shells of what they once were.
Not to say today’s boxing doesn’t provide ample entertainment for
a fan like me, but the talent is scattered among weight classes, without a
club of truly great boxers all waiting to pummel each other for a single belt.
There’s Winky Wright, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Jermain Taylor, the newly
crowned king of the middleweights.
The problem is who are they going to fight?
You may be able to name a few decent challengers out there, but how many?
When do you think boxing is going to be able to put another tournament style
round of fights on to crown a champion, such as the one that happened last
decade with the welterweights?
And in the most publicized weight class of all, the heavyweights, one of the
last fighters who could produce excitement within the ring, retired.
Now there is no Vitali Klitschko, no Tyson, no Lewis, no excitement all the
way down to Manny Pacquiou in one of the lightest classes.
I miss my golden age in boxing. Until it comes back, I’m going to go
watch Ultimate Fighting Championship.
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