Boxing Promoters Association a tough sell for the big wigs
Comparing other sports with boxing is a fruitful exercise. If the NBA were like boxing, for instance, The Lakers would never play the Celtics. They would play the teams in their division, such as Phoenix, Golden State and Sacramento, and many times at
that. But they might back out of a championship with little to no explanation. And if you wanted to watch them play, well, you could see the Clippers play maybe, but a team like the Lakers will cost you $50 a head for pay-per-view.
If the NBA was like boxing, yearly match schedules wouldn't exist, and individual matches would instead be made in the moment, based on promotional offers. Venues would determined not by the home team, but by things like potential gate revenue, and whether
teams are licensed to play ball in that particular state. Not only that, but championship teams would be recognized by sanctioning bodies all over the world, and there would be much more than a few annual championship teams.
As mixed martial arts and the UFC have flowered into a massively successful enterprise, worth more than a billion dollars, a lot of folks have enjoyed comparing UFC and boxing. But strictly speaking, there is no comparison. The UFC is a close-circuited
company that promotes and televises fights themselves, not to mention routinely pits their best guys against their best guys. Fans tend to like that. Boxing, on the other hand, gets into a cold sweat trying to pan out a junior welterweight title bout between
Devon Alexander and Timothy Bradley, let alone a mega-fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
If boxing was rated on organization, it would flunk.
That’s where Joe DeGuardia comes in. Earlier this year, the former Bronx prosecutor founded the Boxing Promoters Association in hopes of building some kind of order out of the mayhem that currently defines the sport.
“Basically, what I want to do with it is to make it an organization that ultimately works for the good of boxing and that will make the industry stronger and that will benefit not only the promoters, but fighters, officials, sanctioning bodies and commissions,”
DeGuardia said. “Everyone who is involved with boxing would benefit. We need to create a structure and have a go-to authority in place with the kind of power to do what is right for the sport.”
Though support has been strong (he’s signed more than 30 promoters), the big wigs have all but had cold feet. Both Dan Goossen Tutor Promotions and Golden Boy Promotions have shown no interest at all. Top Rank, only barely.
To Goossen’s credit, he went on the record and said he is entirely for a unifying association, but added that until bylaws are in place governing the practices of the group, and joining would be pointless. “I’m all for a promoter’s association,” Goossen
recently said. “But saying I’m all for a promoter’s association without a set of bylaws that would govern it would be like saying I’m all for sending kids to school but then sending them to school with no teachers. Sending them to school if there is no one
there to teach them doesn’t do the kids any good. I’m all for a promoter’s association and I would be behind it 100 percent, but it needs to have a purpose and a cause and we need to have a set of bylaws written and signed by all the promoters, just like it
was the Bill of Rights.”
The reality is that this doesn’t look imminent for boxing. Bringing all of the promoters together to set up a new ‘founding’ would be like trying to get the Montagues and the Capulets together for a dinner party. Still, DeGuardia’s work does give fans
something to look forward to in the long run.
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