THERE was a certain prestige attached to being the World Heavyweight Boxing champion. The man had an aura. It was something that people followed and tracked with great glee and gusto. But lately one doesn’t hear of the World Heavyweight boxing champion. Why has this blue riband title fallen off the radar? Is it that the personalities have all vanished? I was a great votary and follower of the world heavyweight boxing championship. And guess what; I actually ended up doing a Google search to see who the current champ is? Shocking, but true.
To my horror I discovered that the greatest and most prestigious sporting title in the world was fragmented. More importantly, the current holder is someone called Ruslan Chagaev, an Uzbek who won over Carl Davis Drumond on 7 February and is regarded by the WBA as co champion along with Nikolay Valuev. By beating John Ruiz on 30 August last year, Valuev had become the active champion while Chagaev was regarded as champion in recess. They are scheduled to fight no later than 26 June to determine who the WBA considers as the undisputed champion of the world. But who cares?
What a mockery of one of the most iconic sporting events? Why have things come to such a sorry pass? And whatever happened to American prizefighters, once the Colossus of the boxing rings around the world. They were like Gargantua – Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali et al. The problem partly emanates from the multiplicity of boxing federations which has led to multiple claimants to the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world’s title. More importantly, an erosion in the equity of the title belt. On the one hand you have the World Boxing Association, then you have the International Boxing Federation (IBF), World Boxing Council and finally there is something called World Boxing Organisation kickstarted in 1988. Between them they have left the sport in tatters.
One of the reasons the heavyweight category in boxing became larger than life were the personalities. As a child I grew up following Muhammad Ali, Ken Norton, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. And then there was boxing impresario Don King who provided the necessary flair and purse money to these bouts. On being asked a couple of years ago as to what his prognosis was to bring the big boy division back to health, King had responded, “We need young guys, exciting young guys who fight to win. Guys in the tradition and mould of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Jimmy Young, Larry Holmes and Rocky Marciano.They got to be guys who go out in each and every fight to win that fight. Those are the young fighters who can bring the division back to its erstwhile glory. We need young guys, especially American guys.”
That is probably one of the biggest malaises to affect modern heavyweight boxing. The Americans have disappeared. The Afro American boxing hero is a phenomenon of the past. Personalities and rivalries are passé in contemporary top division of boxing. As Muhammad Ali said – I say get an education, become an electrician, a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, anything but a fighter. Ben Dirs writing for BBC Sport late last year attempted to understand why boxing’s elite was dying. In the 1960s and 1970s, Muhammad Ali was the ‘Greatest’ and the Afro American community trying to survive in a deeply stratified American society thought following in his footsteps was the best thing given that there weren’t too many other opportunities. Frazier, Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson all came from the poorest of poor backgrounds. For them, the gloves represented a symbol of back superiority, the ring represented black power and so a conveyor belt of champions came out of the US.
From 1934 when Max Baer vanquished Italy’s Primo Carnera till Sweden’s Ingemar Johansson defeated Floyd Patterson in 1959, Americans ruled the roost. Patterson won the title back in 1960 till South African Gerrie Coetzee beat Michael Dokes in 1984. Then Trevor Berbick, a Canadian grabbed the title and since then Americans who were once again kings of the ring have been running the downhill slalom. At the Beijing Olympics, Americans won a solitary bronze, their worst showing in 60 years. Young Afro American youth don’t require the escalator of sport to get them money and standing in society anymore. America has changed over the years, Black Americans can contest for the presidency and win. Similarly, the new inclusiveness has seen them break the last bastion – the Oscars in Hollywood – Denzel Washington, Forest Whittaker, Halle Berry et al have accomplished a lot. There are other less painful ways to earn money in the US. And if one still has to pursue sport, then there is NBA and NFL. Wait, a man named Tiger Woods broke into professional golf and made it his own.
The brutal Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Briton Lennox Lewis were probably the last great champions. Hell, the preacher George Foreman had to come back literally from the grave in the mid 1990s and put his name on the belt. As a callow youth, I reveled in the exploits of Ali and other fighters Frazier, Norton and Foreman. The Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire saw Ali beat Foreman in 1974. Or the Thrilla in Manila, aka Gorilla in Manila, a fight I was privileged to see live on TV as Ali took on Frazier. This was considered the fight of the century. Boxing was embedded in the consciousness of the young those days. And not necessarily in America only. As a young boy, my earliest memories are of all my friends being fervent followers of Muhammad Ali, Frazier and Norton. Many years later, this changed to tennis and the fabled deeds of Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe.
Imagine, years later memories were triggered in the corridors of my mind after watching the movie Rocky Balboa on TV. My mind was in a whirl, it was switched on rewind. The pride to box and rise from the squalor has been overtaken by an easier life. The transition in the lives of Afro Americans and an easier life has put paid to one of the greatest sporting specatcles. Top division boxing in many ways symbolises the journey of Afro Americans in the American way of life. A Journey which began as a movement towards empowerment. It denoted the rise of Black America in its quest for equality, justice and wealth.
Just as young lower middle class Maharashtrian boys grabbed bats to attain the top of the power pyramid, Afro American boys took to sport. The brute power of a bruising boxer, the cerebral subtlety of a ‘floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee’ and the adrenalin rush of a knockout is all lost to us. Times have changed and so has boxing. Leaving all us aficianados the worse for the wear.
