TalkingBoxing Articles
The MMA vs. Boxing Debate and Bad Sanctioning Bodies
TUE October 30, ANDRES ANTONIO CARRIEDO - After a full year of debating this topic with passionate MMA fans both in person and in various virtual forums, I have come to the conclusion that UFC President Dana White is the Karl Rove of fight sports. I am not going to get political here; the analogy fits. Rove’s greatest strength was his ability to frame every debate in his favor so as to put his opponents on the defensive. This is precisely what White has done. I do not view the UFC as an opponent of boxing, but White clearly does and this article will operate under that premise.
Boxing’s storied history and its many divisions have been portrayed as weaknesses. They fit right into the narrative that boxing has become so fractured that the fans are now disinterested. It does not follow that some of the greatest fighters of all time actually fought at featherweight and below. It does not follow that the plethora of weight classes has helped the sport build a global following. Instead, the common retort from White and his acolytes is roughly as follows, “those little guys couldn’t even hurt my grandma.”
Once again this places boxing fans on the defensive; which brings me to the WBA and WBC’s decisions to use a half point scoring system for close rounds. The WBA made this change along with its decision to sanction 9 and 11 round regional title bouts at its convention last month. In the press release the primary justification for these rule changes was a supposed rash of controversial decisions. They even listed the Oscar De la Hoya-Floyd Mayweather fight. One might question why the WBA was even concerned with that fight. They had no part in sanctioning it.
Another question is how does the WBA (or any sanctioning body) determine a decision in a close fight is controversial? Should punch stats come into play? Because if that is the case the De la Hoya-Mayweather decision was far from controversial. The judges’ scores were close, but Mayweather dominated the punch stats. So, what is the criteria being used? Is it public outcry? Public outcry is incredibly biased and one could assume that De la Hoya’s far superior drawing power might also influence profit driven sanctioning bodies like the WBA and WBC.
So, how does this relate to MMA? I cannot prove that it does, but I can and will postulate that both the WBA and WBC are feeling a bit of a pinch from UFC/MMA competition and are trying to manufacture “action” into the bouts they sanction. If a close round ostensibly nets a half point advantage then perhaps a boxer ought to try to win more convincingly just might be the point these sanctioning bodies are trying to convey with this rule change. The objective is to re-encourage the belief that boxing matches provide more brutal action than their UFC counterparts.
It is a veiled attempt to manipulate scoring so that the more popular and/or aggressive fighters will win decisions they otherwise would have lost. If the WBA or WBC thought the problem was judging then they would spend their resources hiring and training better judges. Instead of addressing real issues like its indefensible “Super” champion designation the WBA is throwing more confusion into the already cloudy process of judging prize fights. The WBA decided that they would try to answer Dana White’s call for more action and instead fell right into his trap.
UFC succeeds in large part because Dana White has the league so well organized. Sanctioning bodies like the WBA and WBC have been tripping over each other’s feet for so long that they do not even realize that that is a problem. However well intentioned the new scoring changes might be they are going to hurt the sport because they are aimed at manipulating scores in ways they have never been manipulated before. This will only create more controversy.
This places boxing fans in a position of conflict. Of course we would like more action in pedestrian paced title fights like Pacquiao-Barrera 2 or De la Hoya-Mayweather. We would also like to debunk White’s unsubstantiated though largely uncontested theory that UFC matches are exponentially more exciting than boxing matches. We do not want to be on the defensive about the great sport of boxing. None of that makes what the WBA and WBC are doing right. In fact, the WBA and WBC are in the wrong…again.
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