Photo by German Villasenor
It’s time for another edition of “The Soapbox,” in which we hear once again from “The President,” Andrew V. Kennedy (@PresAVK), who, at the beginning of 2015, expressed his concern on this very platform with where Al Haymon was taking the sport of boxing. Now a few months into the full-blown launch of Premier Boxing Champions, he chimes in with this missive:
“Haymon In Full Effect
“‘During a Dark Age, the mass amnesia of survivors becomes permanent and profound. The previous way of life slides into the abyss of forgetfulness, almost as decisively as if it had not existed’ – Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead
“So we are a couple of months into this thing called the ‘PBC’ (Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions). There have been some decent fights, nothing spectacular. It does seem odd that an outfit as large as the PBC hasn’t been able to produce a ‘Fight of the Year’ candidate as of yet. But with the most cards and the most fighters, it’s bound to happen sooner or later – the law of averages says so. However, despite this lack of elite pugilism, some have begun to praise the PBC for its fight frequency and its cheap price tag.
“Now free stuff has much to recommend it – especially in our current economic times. But ‘free’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ These are two different things. The quality of the fight you are watching should not be determined by the amount you paid for it. It should be determined by the two men in ring and the circumstances surrounding their encounter. If all you want to see is two guys punch each other for free; visit your local nightclub at around 3 a.m.
“Because that’s all the PBC is right now; isn’t it? Two guys punching each other for free. There is no rime or reason to the fights. No narrative or building to something. No true weight classes or belts. No national pride or rivalries. No real ring walks or individuality. But it’s free and plentiful, so, therefore, it must be good.
“The PBC claims it’s ‘taking boxing back to its roots.’ Yet I’m not really sure what roots they’re talking about. It can’t be the roots where fighters were hungry and driven to fight any and all comers. It can’t be the roots where fighters were known more for what they did in the ring than their ‘celebrity’ status. And it sure as hell can’t be the roots where fighters connected with broad swaths of the population. For the very nature of the PBC itself goes against it’s own stated goal. An organization that aims to create its own culture and ‘world’ can’t really be trusted to ensure that the values of the ‘old world’ are carried into the future.
“You can’t manufacture authenticity; you can only create something fake and peddle it as so. You can’t manufacture a Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Tommy Hearns, Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mike Tyson or Julio Cesar Chavez. They were all made by circumstance and a certain culture that was akin to producing ‘authentic’ items. As I’ve said previously, our culture today isn’t (shall we say) as apt to creating such authenticity. Put simply, Iggy Azalea is to Nas as Peter Quillin is to Tommy Hearns.
“The PBC’s cynical use of boxing’s past ‘authenticity’ is not surprising. At its heart, the PBC is a corporate undertaking, a hostile takeover bid. It’s trying to sell you a product – and, over time, make you forget anything that’s happened before. For the general sporting public, this is easy; they are a blank slate, of course. And with ‘journalists’ like Yahoo!’s Kevin Iole writing sugar-coated puff pieces, the average fan will be apt to accept and believe what they are given. After all, it’s free. so it must be good.
“My biggest fear is that the ‘old’ ways of boxing will be washed away over time and lost forever, somewhat like a city neighborhood being overrun by high rise luxury condos. Or a skill or trade being replaced by automation or machines. Now, of course, an ‘old’ way of doing things isn’t necessarily a ‘better’ way of doing things. A neighborhood might be unsafe and rundown. Or a skill or trade that is done by hand might make everyone’s life easier if it is done efficiently by a machine. And we all know the ‘old’ boxing business wasn’t (isn’t) exactly perfect.
“But when certain values and culture are lost, the result is a ‘zombie-like’ dark age, where there is a certain ‘cap’ on the level of quality that something can achieve. In other words, it’s just kind of ‘meh’ all the time. It pains me to see true boxing fans accept mediocrity and then seek validation through a decent scrap that has no real meaning. For I believe the fights and events they truly live for (the ones that you remember for years to come) cannot be produced by the PBC. Because those fights and events require certain aspects of the ‘old’ culture that the PBC is looking to do away with. I might be wrong, of course. Maybe the PBC will deliver us great fights and great fighters. Or maybe, one day, I will just submit, put on my free TV, open up a can of PBC Kool-Aid, read some Iole articles and forget the likes of Marvin Hagler ever existed. At least, then, I can live in peace.”
Mr. President, as always, thanks for sending in your thoughts. They are always appreciated.
First off, as you wrote and I’ve stated more than a few times on Twitter (@steveucnlive), hey, it’s FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! But as you noted, that doesn’t necessarily mean good. In fact, if that’s the best thing you can say about anything, well, that’s not saying much (now, I would state that government/welfare cheese is free but many have told me how much they actually enjoy it).
But I find it interesting that, for all its fanfare, while it’s given us some decent fights like Amir Khan-Chris Algieri and Robert Guerrero-Aron Martinez and some anticipated match-ups like the April 11 doubleheader that featured Peter Quillin-Andy Lee and Danny Garcia-Lamont Peterson from the Barclays Center, they have still yet to truly produce a real “Fight of the Year” candidate, no matter what their announcers or various cheerleaders on press row breathlessly state.
Meanwhile, bouts like Rocky Martinez-Orlando Salido, Lucas Matthysse-Ruslan Provodnikov, Saul Alvarez-James Kirkland (three bouts I happened to be ringside for) and Sergey Kovalev-Jean Pascal were all memorable bouts that will contend for that honor at the end of the year. Yeah, get this: The best fights in boxing – thus far, at least in 2015 – are happening on other platforms.
And I think that’s one of the problems I have with the PBC, for as many boxers as Haymon has under his umbrella, sorry, anything that excludes the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Wladimir Klitschko, Terence Crawford, Timothy Bradley, Miguel Cotto, Roman Gonzalez, along with the aforementioned names, is anything but premier.
And it’s interesting that, in 2015, HBO is having a banner year, ratings-wise (by today’s standards, anyway), while the PBC ratings on their various platforms have leveled off and declined. Imagine that: Quality is something that still resonates with the public. This past weekend’s bout featuring Miguel Cotto averaged just around 1.6 million viewers, which continues their strong run. You kept hearing early on how the PBC was supposed to reach out to the casual fans in an effort to grow boxing’s audience. Well, judging by their ratings, well, it seems that without the hardcore denizens of the sport, there isn’t much general interest being cultivated by the PBC. Yeah, you guys – the ones who watch boxing more than five times a year – absolutely matter…always have, always will.
What’s also hard to ignore is that the PBC is playing to some embarrassingly small, live audiences, as was evidenced this past weekend at the StubHub Center in Carson, where it seemed like a crowd of several hundred spent their afternoon watching this card that was televised nationally on NBC. Not to say it was sparse but I’m told those scant fans who actually showed up were shepherded to the camera side of the venue to make it look better for television.
But the lack of energy and atmosphere was palpable on television.
I guess they should’ve dialed up 1iota Productions for this one.
This goes to the point you made, Andrew: Why is a fight being billed as “The Battle of Ohio” between Shawn Porter and Adrien Broner – who, by the way, are from Akron and Cincinnati, respectively – taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas? And why is the Stateside debut of the accomplished Irishman Carl Frampton from Ireland taking place in El Paso, Texas? Yeah, perhaps with all this investor money ,the live gate and audience really doesn’t matter but it really says something about how flawed this business plan might be, given they sometimes can’t give away tickets – and they may not care.
Now I do think they got it right by placing WBC heavyweight titlist Deontay Wilder in Birmingham, (Sweet Home) Alabama, his home state, where they are expecting a sell-out at the Bartow Center on the campus of UAB. Crawford has proven in Omaha, Neb. that, in college towns, fighters came become franchises from the regions in which they hail. I think having Keith Thurman, who faces Luis Collazo in July on ESPN in Tampa, is a smart move. Having an energetic and engaged audience is an important component of creating good television.
As I look ahead to these other PBC fights on the upcoming schedule, such as the fight between Danny Garcia and Paulie Malignaggi (that Dan Rafael of ESPN said was a possibility) and a match-up between Andre Berto versus Devon Alexander (which boxing insider Rick Glaser has talked about), I see a bunch of Haymon B-sides being paired off against one another. Yes, there are some very recognizable names (given their past exposure on premium cable outlets) but how many of those PBC fighters really move the needle? How many are must-see, appointment television?
But yeah, it’s free; right?
TNR
Here’s the latest edition of “The Next Round” with Gabe Montoya and Yours Truly (a full two-hour edition).
FREE FLURRIES
So is Julio Cesar Chavez Jr./Carl Frampton a day/night doubleheader in El Paso on July 18?…The next “Big Knockout Boxing” card will take place on June 27 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay…Watched “Clutch City” on NBA TV on the Houston Rockets of the ’90s, that won back-to-back titles, and I really enjoyed it. Hakeem Olajuwon played center at as high a level as anyone I have ever seen during that era…”Thunder and Lightning” on Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro on the SEC Network is a must-see for any baseball fan…Yes, I will be in New York this weekend for the HBO card and will be making my annual pilgrimage to Jimmy’s Corner…I can be reached at steve.kim@ucnlive.com and I tweet (a lot) at twitter.com/steveucnlive. I also share photos of stuff at instagram.com/steveucnlive and can also be found at tsu.co/steveucnlive.
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