Is the Super Six tournament a boxing solution or problem?
Showtime’s Super Six Boxing Classic tournament has inspired a lot of talk, both good and bad. On the one hand, interest levels in the States have declined significantly, and advocates say that the format will help save boxing. On the other hand, analysts look to the way the Super Six tournament has gone so far-two contestants have already dropped out, and upcoming fights still remain without venues. These problems stand to highlight some of the organizational problems of the tournament.
One thing that needs to be acknowledged is that five different promoters were able to come together and agree to fighting terms. It’s hard enough to settle terms for two fighters in boxing, let alone those for six. With six fighters and five promoters, the Super Six tournament was able to settle amongst eleven heads- that doesn’t even include Showtime executives who are making the final calls at the end of the day.
The format amongst the current super-middleweights makes it easy to know who’s fighting who, when, and where it’s held (most of the time). In addition, the format involving the six fighters is structurally impenetrable. It cannot be criticized, as it insures fairness and equality based on performance. This is undeniably one of the biggest draws of the tournament, its democratic appeal, in a sport that often otherwise weighs supremely low on exercising democratic decision making.
Outside of the tournament structures, for instance, what fans often get as fights that are supposedly based on rankings, but often come across as stunningly arbitrary. Because today there are so many titlists, potential titlists, and contenders, it’s often easy to make match-ups appear to be about equality of ratings and competition when the fighters are actually totally mismatched. Matches that don’t come across arbitrary are actually subject to all kinds of idiosyncratic business arrangements that interminably affect fights. Fight-making is a business, and isn’t about matching skilled guys. That would be wishful thinking. It’s about making money. But with the Super Six tournament, arrangements were made at the get go, at the door of the event, and cannot be changed due to format.
In assessing the draw, it’s also necessary to look at Super Six drawbacks. For one, time. While the tournament hosts some of the top fighters in the world, it’s taking up a lot of time. It started in 2009, and isn’t going to be finished until June 2011. That makes sense, given the nature of the sport, but still, that’s two years of a fighter’s prime time. And while he’s competing for the fruits of the tournament, championship belts, he’s also on the sidelines for the rest of the boxing world. This is a real problem for the Super Six and the rest of the boxing world. While fighters are active in one, they are inactive in another. This could translate to losing some potentially huge fights. For instance, what if a tournament is going on and there’s another top prospect outside of it, a titleholder, whom the world wants to see take on one of the tournament participants? And what if the time goes by and that outside titleholder becomes too old, retires, or something else and those potential fights can’t happen?
There’s also the question of injury. An exclusive tournament is an intensive structure that does not properly account for injury and circumstance. This is what the Super Six has demonstrated, with the withdrawals of Jermaine Taylor and Mikkel Kessler, and what needs to be accounted for.
Tags: