SANS TV BOXING WOULD BE DECEASED
Atlanta, GA– No other sport of any significance is more of a “television-only” endeavor than boxing. This wasn’t always the case, of course, as the sport far predates the medium and remained an immense local live draw until the last 30 years or so. But as big fights were increasingly pulled from big American cities and routed to Las Vegas and other resort destinations, television virtually became the sport’s life blood.
TV IS THE SPORT’S LIFELINE
How important is television to boxing? Think about this question: what percentage of boxing fans, those people tuning in regularly to fights on HBO and Showtime, has never seen live boxing at any level? 30%? 40%? It wouldn’t surprise me if it were well over 50%, because if you don’t live within 30 minutes of a casino, your opportunities to see boxing are extremely few and far between. Between high school sports, minor league sports, small local race tracks and participatory sports like golf, nearly every other sport geographically blankets the nation. By comparison, the public awareness of boxing in this country without of television could safely be estimated to about zero. It would be like Jai Alai in South Florida.
SHORTEN THE ROUNDS LIKE UFC FIGHTS?
So when there’s one simple thing boxing can do to significantly improve the televised product, it should be strongly considered. And one thing has become clear in recent years – the vast majority of fights on television are too long. It’s time to shorten the number of scheduled rounds.
DIEHARDS STILL DREAM OF 15 ROUND FIGHTS
I can hear half of you screaming now – many of you still lament the loss of the 15-rounder. And I’m with you 100%. I would like to see 15-round championship fights come back. There’s nothing quite like the drama of the championship rounds of a 15-round fight. But that’s never coming back.
HOBOS CAN FIGHT THE 12 ROUND DISTANCE
But something insidious began at about the same time 15-round fights went the way of the Datsun. While championship fights were trimmed to twelve rounds, thanks to the sanctioning bodies, insignificant fights began inflating to “championship length.” With minor title fights, interim title fights and title eliminators, everyone with a pulse is fighting championship rounds these days. Take welterweight fringe contender Delvin Rodriquez. He’s had seven fights scheduled for 12 rounds (and completed the distance four times) without ever facing a major title holder. Recent heavyweight Larry Donald, also without ever fighting a major title holder, fought a staggering fourteen fights scheduled for championship rounds.
By contrast, Jake LaMotta fought five fights in his career scheduled for championship distance in the 1940s and 1950s. Perennial 1970’s heavyweight contender Ken Norton had four. So the impact of losing 15-round fights was doubled by 12-round fights being thoroughly debased. Gone is the drama of a young challenger having to fight the longest fight of his life to win a title. That extra level of conditioning, toughness and heart that was perceived to separate champions from contenders, based largely on the number of rounds they were asked to traverse to be “the man” or stay “the man,” is a memory growing distant.
“TV MAN” HAS SOLID REMEDY
So the first step is easy. The television networks should not accept any 12 round fights that aren’t for a full version of one of the major titles or The Ring recognized title. But it’s time to go one step further, with television in mind. Televised fights in general are too long. A twelve-round fight is 46 minutes with the rest periods, and damn near an hour with introductions and tabulating the decision, while 10-rounders aren’t much shorter. Which is fine for big competitive fights, but too long for the caliber of most of fights we see on television regularly. There are way, way too many non-competitive 10 and 12 round fights being broadcast. And while you can’t predict with certainty which fights will be competitive, let alone exciting, you can control how many rounds are scheduled.
DOES 14 & 15 REALLY PLAY A ROLE?
The number of fights that turn dramatically in the final two rounds is tiny. If you watch every fight on television this year, it may happen a handful of times. Conversely, fights which are clearly a foregone conclusion by the 5th or 7th round are commonplace. In a twelve-round fight, when a fighter wins the first seven rounds, in almost all cases you have five entire rounds of meaningless action to sit through. Any wonder why boxing has trouble finding advertisers? That fifteen minutes of boring, meaningless “fighting” (20 minutes with breaks) is more time that almost all MMA fights are scheduled.
MMA NOT KICKING BOXING’S BUTT!
I think MMA’s dominance over boxing is highly overstated, but this is one area where they definitely get it right. Title fights are five 5-minute rounds for a total of 25 minutes of fighting, but any non-title fight is limited to three five minute rounds, for 15 minutes of fighting. Title fights truly are a different animal in MMA, as they should be, and take the true measure of an athlete. And non-title fights (the majority of fights) are a win-win: they’re either great, or they’re short.
I can hear you screaming now…”How can you deprive us that 11th or 12th (or 10th or 9th) round come-from-behind knockout?” That’s easy…
First, how often does it happen outside the movies? It’s oh, so rare. Sure, once every couple years, you get one Carl Froch KO 12 Jermain Taylor, where a last second knockout rescued Froch, who was down on the cards. Put aside the fact that it was a title fight and should have been twelve rounds legitimately. For every one of those, there are fifty Andre Ward UD12 Edison Miranda for a regional title. For all we know, Miranda is still following Ward around trying to punch him. We might not know it, since he’s hit Ward about as many times in the seven months since that fight as he did in the twelve officially sanctioned rounds.
And even if the miracle comeback was a good enough reason to fight so many 12- and 10-round fights (and it’s not), here’s a little secret: all fights have final rounds. And I would propose that it would happen much more often in shorter fights. Everyone knows that the likelihood of knockouts decreases as fights go on. And it’s a lot easier for a trailing fighter to “lay it all on the line” after seven grueling rounds rather than eleven.
So here it is. Do you want to make boxing better television? Major world title fights are scheduled for twelve rounds. Minor title, regional title, interim title, title eliminator, etc. can be scheduled for ten rounds. Nothing else more than eight rounds. Let’s try to keep title fights special. And as for the rest, let’s keep them great, or short.
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Lou Ciaccia