By Brent Matteo Alderson

A number of factors contribute to boxing’s dwindling coverage in the mainstream media, but nothing negatively impacts the sport more than the lack of blockbuster events involving big stars. 

Everything in this twenty-first century multi-media linked society is star driven.  Even the presidency, now with Barack Obama at its helm, has turned into a media circus with senators frantically vying for an autograph after a Presidential address.

The NBA realized this in the early eighties when they marketed the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry.

Then David Stern, in all his flair for promotion, further embraced the idea of a star-driven league with the commercialization of Michael Jordan and the stars of the 1990s. 

More recently, the NBA has invested heavily into the promotion of Lebron James as the league’s new poster-child, cognizant of the public’s propensity to become enamored with individuals whose talents exceed the standards set by the best in their particular field.  

Why would the NBA deviate from this formula when it has been so pertinent to its growth to where today basketball is occupying a position right next to soccer as one of the planet’s universal past times.

Boxing doesn’t have a powerful centralized authority like the NBA that can execute a massive marketing campaign and change the sport’s trajectory.  

And sometimes this lack of a centralized power can be a good thing.  It certainly was when Jack Johnson was allowed to fight and win the heavyweight title almost forty years before Jackie Robinson was able to play a major league baseball game, but it’s not good when the different entities that run the sport aren’t able to pool their resources together in order to a establish the type of marketing plan necessary for it to be mainstream, and not just a peripheral sport.

 

And on American shores that’s what boxing has become because without a concerted effort to market it on a broad scale, boxing has to depend on its stars to garner the public’s attention and keep it in the lime-light along the side of the other major sports that are successfully marketed by organizations such as the NFL, MLB, and the NBA.

At the moment boxing doesn’t have an active American superstar so it isn’t receiving the necessary exposure.   

Almost since its infancy, prize fighting has usually provided the masses with at least one star that transcends its confines and acts as the sports unofficial ambassador.  

 

In the late 19th century prize fighting was illegal in the United States until John L. Sullivan’s popularity legitimatized it in even the most elite social circles. 

In fact Theodore Roosevelt was so enamored with John L’s exploits that he became a lifelong boxing fan and advocated it as a means to engage in physical activity, and would regularly challenge members of the New York Police Department to sparring matches.

Then again after the establishment took reactionary measures against boxing after Jack Johnson’s ascension to the heavyweight throne, Jack Dempsey came along and took the sport’s world by storm and reinvigorated boxing. 

His bout with French war hero Georges Carpentier in 1921 drew over ninety thousand fans to New Jersey which created boxing’s first million dollar gate and was the first event ever to be nationally broadcasted to home radio sets.    

There after charismatic stars from Joe Louis to Muhammad Ali to Sugar Ray Leonard to Oscar De La Hoya kept boxing in the public’s eye by participating in big fights which were huge sporting events.  

Today even though Boxing is thriving internationally, its popularity is weaning in the United States because it doesn’t have an active American-born superstar.

A lot of people might say that one person can’t carry a sport, but look at golf.  Where would it be without Tiger Woods?  It certainly wouldn’t be as publicized as it is today. And as a result its revenues and fan base wouldn’t be growing.   

It’s evident looking at boxing through an international paradigm that regional stars have been the catalyst for the global boxing boom. 

Manny Pacquiao’s heroic march through boxing’s best fighters has fostered a seemingly lasting interest in the sport in the Philippines and guys like Lucian Bute of Canada and Anthony Mundine of Australia have brought boxing to the forefronts of sporting news in their respective countries.  Even the boxing renaissance in Germany was first sparked by an Olympic star in Henry Maske.

So with a reported twenty-eight thousand registered amateur fighters in the U.S. why isn’t there an American superstar? 

Well there is and his name is Floyd Mayweather Jr.  And he’s been trained to become a boxing legend since he was in the womb and is undefeated and probably the most complete fighter in the world today. 

Alex Camponovo, the matchmaker for Thompson Boxing recently commented that Mayweather was a “perfect fighter,” and trainer Henry Ramirez stated that unequivocally “Mayweather is pound for pound the best fighter in the world.”

As good as Floyd Mayweather is as a boxer, he’s lacking something in the character department, and his conduct has illustrated how he has become the boxing equivalent of a spoiled child. 

First in 2000 at the age of twenty-two he fired his father and hired the inexperienced James Prince who lulled him in with the promise of fame in the rap game and then proceeded to alienate a number of people in the industry when he compared a multi-million dollar HBO deal to a “slave contract.”

The very next year a dominative in-the-ring performance against a 33-0 Diego Corrales revitalized his career that seemed to be stagnating and landed him a six-fight 15 million-dollar contract with HBO.   

Things seemed to be back on track after the win over Corrales and Floyd seemed destined to become a legend, but after a couple of taxing bouts with the underrated Jose Castillo, he took a page from Roy Jones and chose the path of least resistance and except for an over-hyped yet safe bout with Arturo Gatti, he wasted three years of his career from 2003 through 2005. 

Then realizing that he was approaching thirty and time was running out on his dream of boxing immortality and financial security for generations of Mayweathers, Pretty Boy Floyd decided that he wanted to fight the best and started 2006 out with an impressive win against the talented Zab Judah.   

Again Mayweather’s immaturity which is prevalent in this era of pampered athletes was on display later that year after his victory over Carlos Baldomir when he cried at the post fight conference, “For all the negative press, when you all wrote about me in the past and said I done things I didn’t do and tore my name down, tore my family down, I’m still rolling to the top.  When it’s all said and done; only god can judge me and that’s real.  I came out like a gladiator because that’s what I am, a gladiator. It’s not about the money, it’s about being a legend and that what I am.  I’m going to be remembered as the best.”    

His comments seemed delusional, like those of a grammar school student who doesn’t do his work and then claims the teacher doesn’t like him after he receives a bad grade because with that kind of emotional outburst you would have thought Floyd had taken part in the first Corrales-Castillo fight, but in fact the bout with Baldomir was the farthest thing from the Thrilla in Manila.

 

Yes Floyd had dedicated his life to boxing, but he acted as if he had gone through a gauntlet of challenges in a series of super fights with the sport’s most formidable pugilists and was going to go out of the game like Sugar Ray Leonard, but that just wasn’t the case.

He hadn’t cleaned out the division. Not even close. 

Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito, and Shane Molsey were all deserving challengers and victories over two of those guys probably would have insured Mayweather’s place as one of the top fifteen fighters in the history of the sport and then he could have cried about people not appreciating his talent and bid a sad farewell, secure in knowing that he truly was one of the great ones. 

It didn’t happen that way even though Mayweather’s ego tricked him into thinking it did. 

 

That’s just who Mayeather has become, a melodramatic pre-Madonna that overrates his own greatest and overdramatizes his experiences in boxing.

Don’t get me wrong Mayweather has left an indelible mark on the sport and should probably be considered one of the best thirty fighters of all time, but Floyd hasn’t achieved the kind of greatness on the grand scale that he envisions. 

He’s no Sugar Ray Leonard. He didn’t come into the sport and beat Benitez, Duran, Hearns, and Halger.

He does have solid wins against Genaro Hernandez, Diego Corrales, Jose Luis Castillo, and Arturo Gatti, and was on his way to that rare almost mythical type of greatness, but just when he started to become a star in the main stream with wins over Zab Judah, Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya, he retired.

Imagine if Sugar Ray Leonard would have retired after the second Duran fight and skipped the bout with Tommy Hearns.   He would never have firmly established himself as one of the greatest pound for pound fighters of all time.

Above all else Floyd’s retirement has hurt the sport that he has professed to love so many times. 

Even though most experts knew he would be back, his inactivity has negatively impacted boxing in the United State because prior to his self-imposed exile Mayweather had finally achieved a level of fame and notoriety where all of his fights would have been considered big events.

Without question his refusal to continue his career created a void and the lack of an active American born mega-star has been the overriding reason major media outlets ignore boxing as a whole and is the driving force behind its dwindling popularity in the United States.

It was Mayweather’s time to carry on the American boxing tradition and assume the role as America’s twenty first century boxing super star and he didn’t step up.

That’s what’s sad; Mayweathers perception of reality is so misconstrued that he feels like he’s already left his mark as the greatest fighters of all time when in fact he had just arrived at the one last bridge he needed to cross to accomplish that feat.

I’m not saying Floyd owes boxing because he doesn’t owe anybody anything especially the way this sport leaves its participants beat-up and broke.  

It’s just that Floyd is so close to really accomplishing what he said he’s always wanted to do.  All he has to do is fight and win three more super-fights.  

He’ll probably make more money in those three fights than his first thirty nine fights combined and if victorious he’ll earn a place next to guys like Muhammad Ali, Henry Armstrong, and Roberto Duran.  All he has to do is come down off his high horse back to reality and recognize how close he is to achieving all of his dreams. 

Notes:

Favorite Quote: - The famed fight publicist Irving Rudd once made a comment about “Young writers and their sentimental stories of boxing men who would have stolen pennies off the eyes of a dead man!”   

It’s become obvious that if the Klitschko brothers fought each other that Vitali’s power and toughness would take him to victory over Wladimir’s superior skill.

 

I think Mayweather beats Pacquiao every day of the week and twice on Sunday. 

Wasn’t the fight scene the other week at the Lucian Bute bout in Montreal awesome.  Lucian should never leave the confines of Quebec. 

I think Mayweather beats every 147 pounder in the world except for Paul Williams.  The punisher is just too big for Floyd who should probably still be fighting at junior-welterweight. 

Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?”  Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com