Two fantasy ideas to improve boxing

it was, when there was one champ per division, and only 8 weight classes.

 

If you mean how they can fit into my #3, I agree. If you mean something else, elaborate.

I do think there are plenty of good/excellent commentators, I just think that a lot of the more popular ones can be poisonous.

 

Cool. But your promoters/crooks angle is all wrong. It's always been like that (I wish it wasn't)

If for those reasons it's not a sport now, it was never a sport.

 

Boxing is a strange blend of sport, entertainment, athletic endeavour, endurance, grit, cheating, opportunism, theft and assault.

Its not really a sport, per se, and it is doubtful that it ever was.

 

Humans competing against one another using physical abilties of any kind is a sport.

Don't fall into the North American cesspool of thinking that a sport is only defined by Hockey, Basketball, NFL and Baseball.

Just when I think I'm out y'all pull me back in....

 

Two guys throwing punches at each other is sport.

But the fights themselves are the tail end of boxing.

Its like a black dog with a white tail being called a "white dog".

It isn't.

Boxing goes way beyond the fights. Unlike no other sport, it is a game of sham, and chance, and spoofery and bluffing, and perception and deception.

The fights themselves have the same relationship to "Boxing" proper, as a nugget of gold does to a Gold Mine.

Somebody had to find the nugget, use some poor bastard to dig it out, wash it off, hump it around, then they had to polish it and sell it for far more than it was worth and for far more than they paid to get it.

That's boxing. Its a nugget of gold with a trail of theft, sweat, appropriation, sham and effort and you name it thrown in. You got a few lucky winners, a tonne of unlucky losers, a shitload of work and earth-moving for just a few nuggets, and a whole host of morons ready to pay more for it than it is really worth, or even better, not prepared to pay half as much as they should because the nugget ain't been polished up quite the way they like it.

 

Clinches happen by accident all the time. It's only a problem when they become a free way to escape from fighting any time you want. Then fighters start initiating them deliberately to avoid fighting ....ALLL.....THE.....TIME.....

And in-fighting becomes a dead art since anyone who's not as good at it as the other guy has an instant out. It wasn't always this way and it has to change back.

 

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I just mean bad commentators are a symptom of a larger problem.

My primary complaint when it comes to commentators is their lack of objectivity and the tendency on the part of guys like Lampley to
try to add clarity and certainty to matters where there simply isn't any.

If commenting on anything except the raw facts of what's happened works to the benefit of the network, then it's unrealistic to expect the networks not to employ commentators who do so.

And so bad commentators are simply a symptom of TV networks having an agenda other than simply showing good fights.

 

It's more entertainment than real sport I guess.

 

:giggle::giggle:

 

I think we agree to the extent possible clinching should be eliminated from the sport, especially as a tactic for overcoming fatigue or for neutralizing an opponent's ability to fight inside.

My only point is, if one guy is constantly clinching the other, the onus should not be on the guy getting clinched to fight out - he should not be penalized in any way for having been clinched, and that includes requiring him to exert the energy necessary to break out of the clinch.

The thing about clinching is that there's no even-handed way to mitigate it. The minute clinching is treated like an unfortunate circumstance that requires either the fighters break, or punch out, the minute it becomes a viable tactic for whomever is willing to clinch.

I've seen many fights where one fighter avoided inside fighting all together, not simply through clinching, but with complicity from the referee who was quick to break them everytime there was a clinch.

By the same token, there's fighters like Hopkins, especially in his earlier days, who relied heavily on referees' encouraging fighting out of the clinch in order to effectively hold and hit, and stay in his opponents' chest.

The only way clinching is removed as a factor in the outcome of a fight is for it to not occur. And the only way for it to not occur is for fighters who initiate them to be penalized.

 

Are you talking about our Maravilla?..:scratcher:

 

No, not quite. Maybe tomorrow.

Our Maravilla Is pfp yo.

 

Since this is fantasy, I wish there was a "courage pill" certain fighters could and should be made to injest.

 

Boxers are good at in jesting things.

 

I'd be genuinely curious to hear mike's contribution to this 'blue sky' discussion.

 

:shit:

There, I summarized it in advance for him

 

I forgot the real sky's already blinding azure in mike's world.

 

only to be different

 

I already did respond and you said you wanted to hear my ideas, not my opinion...around post #5, i think.

So I responded with my ideas. Now you want the good stuff?

I believe in freedoms, capitalism, and money.

If you want to improve the sport, then it should be done with the understanding that fighters and others have freedoms, a capitalistic model is almost always the best model long-term, and if you want to make changes you have to consider the financial implications.

So my response to most of the 'blue sky' proposals is that they are unrealistic when looked at from such a viewpoint.

Which I summarized in my first response by saying something along the lines of 'you did say this was fantasy'

 

My apologies mikE, I missed that post.:doh:

 

Boxing is going to wind up like Horse Racing.

 

i do not think so because then it would be different sport

 

Yeah.

 

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:bangh:

 

atilla the pun rules

 

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