Professional boxing has become less and less popular over the last couple of decades. The primary reasons? There are no great heavyweights to root for and most fights are decided by judges and not the boxers themselves. That and UFC offers a lot of what boxing used to offer.
Boxers today are content to get a lot of body shots in on their opponents, but most are not willing to take the risk of going for a knockout. They swing a lot. They connect a lot. But they don't really punish the other boxer. They then stand back and let the judges decide how pretty their punches looked in the ring.
Saturday night that strategy backfired for Manny Pacquiao. Most viewers saw him dominate the fight, seeing him throw and land a lot more punches. The problem is that two of the judges (you know the guys that matter) didn't see the same fight as the rest of us. Manny lost his title because of that and boxing lost much of the reputation it still had left.
Boxing has become ballet. And judges award the points. I've never liked any sport where judges decide the points and the winners. Boxing used to be a sport where two men entered the ring and the one who lost was the one who could not finish the fight. For safety reasons they decided that was too dangerous. I don't disagree with the reasoning, but it's left us with a sport that really is no longer boxing. And no longer interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment