By Brent Matteo Alderson

I picked up a Ring Magazine from the 1950s and with just a glance I read something about how the sport of boxing was dying.  Well I guess some things never change because boxing’s demise is something that has regularly been mistakenly predicted since the 18th century.  Despite the negative outlook boxing is here to stay.

Regardless of how you feel about the sport, it has always been more sensitive to reacting to trends and changes in society.  The first film ever produced for commercial purposes was a boxing match, the first sporting event to be broadcasted on the radio was a boxing match, and the first black athlete to reach the pinnacle of a major professional sport was Jack Johnson.  Not to demean the accomplishments of UCLA’s only four sport varsity athlete and baseball hall of famer, but Jackie Robinson didn’t play in the big leagues until 1947, a year after Johnsons’ death. 

Part of the reason that boxing is so quick to adapt to societal changes is that there’s no centralized authority. There is no real bureaucracy so there aren’t too many things that can impede change.  Even with all the alphabet organizations and the different athletic commissions, the sport at its most basic level still essentially consists of two fighters that want to get paid to engage in hand to hand combat and financial backers that want to make money from it.

Today boxing isn’t in very good shape in the United States, but it will continue to survive and flourish.  Occurrences in boxing are always a microcosm of what’s happening on a grander scale.  John L. Sullivan ushered in the area of professional sports and a media-star-crazed society and Jack Dempsey represented the roaring twenties and Ali symbolized the social upheaval of the 1960s. 

More recently Oscar De La Hoya’s entrance into the mainstream was symbolic of the Hispanic community’s assimilation into American society and America’s own self-identification process which drastically changed during the course of the last twenty years.  

Boxing was also at the forefront of ushering in a new era in professional sports where women’s participation isn’t just condoned, but encouraged.  People credit the 1996 women’s soccer and basketball teams for fostering this change, but it was Christi Martin who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and awed millions of viewers around the world with her valiant performance on the undercard of Tyson-Bruno Two that sparked the movement. 

And why wouldn’t it?  Martin’s performance was a paradox because her fight was more brutal than any other bout on the card that night and got people thinking that if a woman could go toe to toe and entertain fans like that in a boxing match, why couldn’t they do it in other forms of athletic competition?  Not surprisingly, a Month after Martin’s coming out party, the NBA signed preliminary contracts to initiate the WNBA the very next season.    

And today boxing is again ahead of the pack and has adapted to another trend that will forever change humanity; globalization.

The success of Great Britain’s middleweights in the early nineties and late eighties involving Michael Watson, Nigel Benn, and Chris Eubank along with Lennox Lewis’s arrival sparked an English revival which has been fomented by the extraordinary accomplishments of Joe Calzaghe and Ricky Hatton. 

The United Kingdom is the ancestral home of modern prize fighting so it’s not surprising that its popularity still persists.  What is surprising is the extent to which the sport has risen in popularity in a number of other countries. 

Boxing in Germany is probably more popular than it’s ever been.  1988 Gold Medalist Henry Maske was the first boxer to garner the public’s attention after the fall of the Berlin wall and helped usher in this golden age of German boxing that has enabled a unified Germany to etch its mark in the world as one of Mecca’s of the sport. 

Today some of the sport’s best athletes skip the historical and customary trek to America in order to find fistic fame and fortune in the Rhineland. 

The Slavic countries of the former soviet republic are producing world class heavyweights at a startling pace and seem to be overwhelming the division.  Valuev, the Klitschko brothers, Ibrigamov, Povetkin, and the rising Dimentriko are all legitimate world class heavyweights.  

In the Philippines and Indonesia, Manny Pacquiao and Chris John have helped raise boxing’s status and have established a seemingly lasting popularity throughout those regions. In Latin America, boxing continues to flourish in countries like Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Panama as they regularly produce world champions.

The sport is even breaking attendance records in Australia with the villainous Anthony Mundine and the down to earth Danny Green and is still very popular in Japan and Thailand. 

And with successful fighters like Arthur Abraham and Vanes Martirosyan, boxing has become the preeminent sport in the world’s Armenian communities. 

So even though it seems as though the sports fan base in the United States is becoming gentrified and boxing seems to be losing steam with this lost generation of reality television junkies and I-pod addicts, boxing has again showed resiliency and its aptitude for adapting to the times and staked its claim in the global realm and created a world-wide fan base that will exist for years to come. 

Notes:

Favorite Quote: - In talking about his sparring sessions with Sonny Liston, Big George Foreman once commented, “Sonny was the only guy I could never back up. I’d hit him with some monster shots and he’d just shake his head and say ‘No Son.’”

Ring Magazine recently ranked Chris Arreola as its seventh ranked heavyweight and I asked his trainer, the electric Henry Ramirez if he was happy that boxing’s oldest periodical had finally ranked Chris among the top heavies in the world and he replied, "we are happy about getting ranked number seven in the world by the ring, but right now the WBC number one ranking is of more concern."

I’m not a fan of women’s boxing or the WNBA for that matter, but you have to respect Anne Wolfe. She’s baaad.  This week’s edition of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel profiles Wolfe and her team actually gets pulled over for riding in a stolen vehicle.  There was a minor-mistake in the segment as they called James Kirkland a junior-welterweight contender.

Muscle & Fitness Magazine recently went to Wladimir Klitschko’s training camp off the coast of Spain and penned a detailed account of his training regimen. It was an extensive piece that could only be funded by a well circulated piece in print journal. 

Arthur Abraham has been the IBF middleweight champion since 2005 and has made nine successful defenses, its time he’s given the opportunity to establish himself as the best middleweight in the world. 

There has been talk of a potential bout between Anderson Silva and Roy Jones, but as good as Silva is in the UFC and he’s probably one of the best pound for pound MMA fighters in the world, he was 1-1 as a professional boxer. 

All these MMA schools are popping up everywhere, but if a kid wants to become a professional MMA fighter, wrestle in high school. 

NICARAGUAN BOXING

In 1998 I was living in Costa Rica teaching English and partying.  So I took a 12 hour bus ride up to Nicaragua for a week. At the time the country was still recovering from the civil war that ended in the early nineties, you know the Iran-Contra affair, the Sandinistas, and all that stuff. 

Well there still wasn’t a McDonalds in the capital city and the hospitals were closed do to a union strike, but their passion for boxing was very apparent. 

I turned on the television and two different stations were showing classic fights.  Then I wondered the city and saw Alexis Arguello stadium, Arguello Street, and Arguello Avenue.  Then one night I told a cab driver to take me to a dance club (discoteca) with good music and better looking women.  So we pulled up and there were nice cars parked out front and a huge line.  Now remember this is Nicaragua circa 1998 and the average citizen didn’t own a car.  So I walk into the club and it’s as modern as most clubs in the United States, but there was one difference; boxing was still on people’s minds.

In one room on a huge projection screen television they were playing the HBO telecast of Foreman-Pierre Coetzee that had occurred five years earlier and in another part of the club they had one of Alexis Arguello’s fights on. 

Today, Nicaragua is a lot different and is considered one of the best places in Latin America for real estate investment, but from my short experience there, all I can say is that Nicaraguans love their boxing. 

In Spanish the word night club is used to describe a strip club or brothel, the term discoteca is what Latin Americans used to say dance club.

It was nice to see Manny Pacquiao wear a UCLA beanie during his run on the last episode of 24/7.  He’s smart enough to know a winning team when he sees one.  

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