HOW TO FIX BOXING (The Top Ten Very Best Ways To Fix The Sport)

I love boxing; it's a great, pure sport that's been a huge part of American culture for decades. Unfortunately however, boxing is the victim of corruption, mismanagement, abandonment and a host of other issues. Boxing's prominence is steady many places over seas, but it's declining in the states for various reasons. It's obvious to most American boxing fans that boxing needs a change, at least on the home front. Below is a list of the very best, top ten things boxing can do to improve itself and return to its former glory.

1. FEWER WEIGHT CLASSES

Everyone knows there are way too many weight classes. Fighters move up in different weight classes like its a big deal or badge of honor. It’s just more proof that the weight classes need condensing. Too many weight divisions weaken several classes, throw too many belts around, and makes it hard for fans to keep up.

I like many things about the old days of boxing. You could fight a guy 10, even 20 or so pounds heavier or lighter than you and it wasn’t a big deal. It shouldn’t be. Sugar Ray Robinson fought Jake Lamotta 16lbs lighter and won convincingly. The exact weight thing is passé and not necessary. It would be more interesting and a new exciting challenge for trainers to decide for themselves where their fighter should fight at between 10-20lbs in a particular division. It would also cut unnecessary negotiation, wrangling and weigh in woes. The weight class should be what it is and that’s that. Fighters would be healthier, in better condition and fight closer to their natural weight. For example, super middle weights would train up to the 170’s or 80’s, or down to the 150’s based on their body type. Below are division limits that I suggest, give or take a few pounds.

Super Heavy Weight: 235+

Heavy Weight: 201-234 (Wladimir Klitschko/David Haye/Tomasz Adamek/)

Light Heavy Weight: 175-200 (Antonio Tarver/Bernard Hopkins/Chad Dawson)

Middle Weight: 155-174 (Andre Ward/Kelly Pavlik/Paul Williams)

Welter Weight: 140-154 (Mayweather/Pacquiao/Andre Berto)

Light Weight: 120-139 (Juan Manuel Marquez/Nonito Donaire/Yuriorkis Gamboa)

Feather Weight: 110-120 (Elio Rojas/Luis Concepcion/ Toshiaki Nishioka)

Fly Weight: 110 and down

The division can stay the same for the Olympics or other leagues, but this is how it should be for the pros hands down. A little weight disparity should be normal. Overzealous and competitive trainers incessantly try to leave no stone unturned and nothing perceived as an advantage for opponents. Since promoters, trainers and managers love to over complicate, all fighters could continue to agree to a weight within the spread of their division. With this condensed weight division list, being the best of your division would mean more and it would definitely produce more stars deserving of the hype and put more meaningful focus on the right guy. And if a fighter wants notoriety and the big cash, they would have to train up or down and fight their way into dominance more legitimately.

2. CHANGE FORMAT

I thought the Super Six Super Middle Weight Tournament was a great idea and produced some excitement. Unfortunately, things like this are so infrequent in boxing. Every sport has a playoff season. Boxing should have more eventful, organized contests that put the best fighters against each other and narrows the best down by process of elimination, forcing the merging of varying letter belts. The sport desperately needs more evenly matched face offs and organization. Boxing needs to do a better job putting the best up against the best, creating rivalries and having a format that everyone understands, and everyone knows who's fighting who and why. Instead we sit and wait to hear what fighter a manager cherry picked for his champion. Boxing's hyped up king of the moment is Manny Pacquiao who's an awesome fighter and great to watch. However, his last string of fights were totally and completely meaningless. Journeyman Clottey...., disgraced Margarito who had to train down in weight ....why? These random picks are like playing "Fight Night" on Play Station.

Boxing would be more respected with a process of elimination format like the Super Six Tournament for all weight divisions. Boxing's viewership would definitely increase. The Super Six Tournament assembled some of the 6 top super middle weights in the world who probably wouldn't have fought each other when they did otherwise. Having a mandated structure would clean up the rankings, force fights, and remove bums and has beens who don't belong as highly ranked as they are. Imagine a super six for the welterweight division.

A weight class with tons of talent like the welter and middle weights provide their own excitement. However, a weight class that's on life support like the heavyweights isn't producing its own excitement and can use the help of a process of elimination contest. When you have guys with 0 athletic ability like Chris Arreola being profiled on HBO as a heavyweight champ hopeful, there's a serious problem. It's obvious there's no leadership and a boxing overhaul is way over do. Why Joshua Clottey gets to fight Pacquiao before guys like Andre Berto is ridiculous. Stars on top get pampered and coast on their name. Guys who would bang their way into dominance, they keep calling them "promising" or "rising stars" and don't give them the proper face offs until their old and the cycle continues. Especially with the heavyweights that traditionally are supposed to be the biggest draw, boxing needs to wake up and get organized before the fans disappear yawning.

3. MORE COVERAGE

Boxing has dropped the ball in this department. Boxing needs to bring back weekly recaps---and on regular TV at regular hours. They should invest in introducing us to new stars, showing highlights, giving updates, and keeping fans and non boxing fans motivated and in the loop on a regular basis. The sport is abandoned in the US. For some unexplained reason boxing is never mentioned in the regular news or sports programs on TV or radio. All promoters, managers, and networks are interested in is hyping up the biggest fights they can with the biggest stars they can as it's happening, and getting paid. But no one is investing in making younger generations give a damn ahead of time and consistently. MMA is outmaneuvering boxing in that respect. When no one's getting paid, no one cares about publicizing the sport. You have to keep the sport in visibility whether there is fight on or not.

4. FEWER LETTER ASSOCIATIONS AND BELTS PER WEIGHT CLASS

There are way too many "champions" and belts floating around. There are fighters holding on to different belts in the same weight class and aren’t fighting each other. It’s getting ridiculous. The letter Associations are corrupt and they are ruining the sport. There should be one clear champ that the world acknowledges. There should also be one ranking list for all boxers instead of these doctored up separate rankings that mean nothing.This conundrum is hurting boxing and confusing people. In each division and weight class, people need to identify the one clear person on top.

The Klitchko brothers each holding heavyweight belts and not fighting is cute, but a totally stupid example of what’s wrong with boxing.

World champions are recognized by the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC), International Boxing Federation (IBF) and World Boxing Organization (WBO). If someone wins any one of the aforementioned belts, systematically they should be obligated to fight another belt holder in a different association until there is one clear winner. The winners of the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO belts should win belts and be acknowledged as champs, but they shouldn't be referred to as "Champion of the World". The person who wins all belts should be honored a different distinction and be recognized as the real world champion. The boxing associations confuse and frustrate many fans. All boxing associations need to cease to exist, or at least need some sort of systematic unification process. Otherwise each title winner isn't truly a world champion at all.

5. MONEY REGULATION

Boxing is in dire need of better money regulation. All the money spills in to the pockets of networks, promoters, managers and A-list fighters. There isn’t money being invested back into the sport, or for the benefit of all professional fighters. All professional boxers should be provided a special health insurance. It would also be good if active pro boxers had more monetary incentives. All pro athletes in other sports sign contracts. Boxers get paid per fight. The sport should provide more for fighters, mainly the ones in the lower tier.

It shouldn't be so difficult for someone good enough to turn pro to finally start seeing good money. Every sport needs to invest in itself or it will die. The best talent in this country is signing up for other sports every year. Why would you blame them?

If an active professional fighter maintains a certain amount of professional fights per year, they should be given health insurance and stipends. You can't expect great talent to continue to come to a sport that does nothing for its athletes until they reach the top. The money is there. Tallying the last 2 or 3 fight purses of 2 or 3 A list fighters is well over 100 million dollars. A very small percentage of every purse should go toward this initiative.

Guys that sit on the bench in other sports still pull in the cash. A very small percentage of boxers rake in the big doe and most amateur or lower tier pro boxers need day jobs. If pro fighters at least got guaranteed health insurance and a small monthly stipend it would change the sport, and they would come. If the Associations and Promotional companies truly care about the sport, and want it to grow, give it some class and dignity and take care of the athletes. This would reflexively attract more, and better talent to the sport which would in itself revolutionize the sport.

6. MORE JUDGES AND JUDGE REGULATION

Many people remember several times when judges got it wrong. Innumerable times a split decision has gone the wrong way and it frustrates fans and changes boxing records forever. The answer to that is more judges, 4-6 perhaps. 3 judges can get it wrong and they often do. It’s less likely for 4-6 judges to all get it wrong, to all be compromised by some kind of corruption, and to all score a fight contrary to popular opinion. With more judges, fights would definitely be tallied more correctly, and it would provide a more exciting and suspenseful post fight moment when the scores are being announced by more judges than 3.

There should also be performance regulation for judges which will thwart corruption, hometown favoritism, or just bad judging period. Judges don't have to answer to anyone and stay out of sight. Judging isn't factual, but there are many times when some judges are way off and their score is obviously erroneous or compromised. A judging evaluation system would hold judges accountable and prevent bad calls.

7. REFORM DRUG TESTING PROCEDURES

People are cheating and using steroids in many major sports. If this is a concern for people and the associations, then they need to implement Olympic style random blood testing. It's the only way to curb steroid use. With so many athletes collared for steroids in and outside of boxing, with rumors of hundreds of fighters getting around it, its baffling why they don't do this. This would successfully eliminate the stalemate between Mayweather and Pacquiao, and it would keep every boxer clean.

8.REGULATE INACTIVITY

Many fighters, especially the ones at the top, don't fight often enough. Champions sit with belts for long periods of time to lengthen their reign as champ without contention. In general and because there isn't an organized system in place, fight camps spend most their time deliberating and negotiating. Inactivity of fighters and especially champions is hurting the sport. There's too many periods of deadness. They should implement stricter stipulations to enforce fighter activity.

9. LEARN FROM UFC FORMULA

Boxing adheres to a very old format that doesn’t gel well with newer, younger fans. The broadcasting of Boxing needs an overhaul.With UFC's Spike TV deal, MMA fans get to see action packed reruns of excellent fights very often. They have their pay per view events too of course, but they always present a collection of great fights to see on a regular basis. Boxing doesn't devote it's time and money into a channel in which fight fans get to see legendary match ups or great fights. And most fights shown on Friday Night Fights for free are lackluster.

Some boxing people complain that UFC is stealing the thunder from boxing but this is so not true. In fact UFC might even be helping boxing. Regardless, boxing should learn from the emerging kindred sport. Years ago in a very small amount of time I was all caught up and I learned almost everything there is to know about MMA and the UFC. Spike TV shows UFC fights, fighter profiles and promos very often---for free--- and I became engaged. Boxing doesn't come to the fans, boxing snobbishly makes fans have to come to it, and pay. Unlike UFC, boxing has no visibility anymore.

Perhaps most importantly, MMA has UFC, Strikeforce, and others but UFC is the most dominant league and the champion is the champ. None of this IBF, WBA, WBC nonsense.

UFC is relatively new so there is several people who promoted it passionately and wanted it to work. Lots of money was invested into UFC and the results are conspicuous. In boxing, fighters justifiably are concerned with fighting, managers are concerned with opportunities for their fighters, promoters are concerned with making fights and making money, but who's working for the sport? Most work in and around the sport and take boxing as a given entity, but no one is working on behalf of the sport itself.

UFC also does a better job at making good match ups and rivalries. Because of all the aforementioned issues with boxing, boxing creates a lot of snoozers and exhibitions for A list fighters.

Because boxing is relegated to cable TV stations not everyone has, late at night, and/or for pay, it's alienating kids and younger viewers. You can watch UFC and UFC highlights all the time---for free. Culturally America is still loyal to old "sweet science" but its losing its steam because it doesn't reach out to fans or appeal to new ones. Any sport that no longer appeals to or attracts younger viewers has a future in jeopardy.

10. INVEST IN THE FUTURE

Boxing has become so greedy and pathetic that they only invest in the same big names. Boxing needs to promote young stars on the rise and introduce them to the public early. Boxing needs to do a much better job in allowing viewers to follow their careers early instead of waiting until they’ve spent 10 years building a name for themselves and boxing finally decides their promotable. Promote highlighted versions of several young fighters and good fights. Promote these fighters early so we can start picking stars and favorites.When these young fighters rise to the point of winning championships, HBO or Showtime attempts to publicize the fights but no one knows who they are.

In football and basketball, we get to watch stars in college ball right on through. Boxing needs to invest time and money into fighters’ careers from beginning to end. If their promising, we should care about fighters at 10 and 0 and not just 20 and 0.

In the basketball world, there's a show called Run It Back where they air highlighted versions of basketball games on Cartoon Network. The games cut out all the dead spots, are full of visual and sound effects, and extra kid friendly clips. I personally watch it a lot. Why can't boxing make an attempt to spice things up and reach the young?

Not just one of these things, but all these things together would revolutionize the sport and bring it back to life. It would better understood, respected and there'd be fewer recognized champions floating around. Boxing will always have a place in American culture, but the more the sport is ignored and abandoned, the sooner the flame will flicker out.

What boxing snobs that don't care about recruiting new fans don't seem to realize is that it all goes hand in hand: The more the sport remains out of view, the more the sports overall talent pool weakens and the more of the nation's best athletes sign up for other sports. When the sport is out shined in terms of exposure, it remains further away from common social thought and consideration. Then we the fans get stuck watching a Heavyweight division that once was dominated by exciting American champions, continue to morph into a bunch of "the next best things" hurl hay makers at each other in uneventful match ups.