On Saturday night, boxing reminded the world just how exciting it can be when packaged properly by a network that cares about promoting the sport to the masses.
Then, of course, it reminded everyone why most of the mainstream sports world had walked away from it in the first place, by screwing Manny Pacquiao with a bogus unanimous decision loss.
Yes, underdog Jeff Horn was plucky and game and doing a lot better than most had anticipated. The Australian fighting schoolteacher's size and awkward, unpolished style kept Pacquiao unsure of himself in the early rounds-something that allowed for the unheralded challenger to keep things close. However, by the middle rounds, the defending WBO welterweight champ, Pacquiao, was firmly in control and Horn was doing little more than pushing forward and falling into sloppy, non-scoring mauls that succeeded in opening two cuts on either side of Manny's head. It seemed to be the case of an overachieving tough guy simply being outclassed over the long haul by a better, more talented, and more experienced fighter.
And then the scores were read.
Three pro-Horn scorecards later (one by judge Waleska Roldan with the audaciously bad 117-111 tally), and boxing had managed to turn a winning night into a reinforcement of the mainstream's prejudice against taking boxing seriously.
Hardcore cynics (or realists) could draw the correlation between this fight's unsatisfying result and the first Pacquiao-Bradley bout in 2012, which was also a conveniently botched decision that just happened to work out to the benefit of Bob Arum and Top Rank Promotions. Pacquiao-Horn, just like Pacquiao-Bradley, comes at a time when Pacquiao's big fight options have run dry and venturing away from "in-house" matchmaking would prove to be too risky. And, just like Bradley, Horn was brought into the Top Rank family conveniently at the exact perfect time to be the foe around which Top Rank can manufacture a rivalry for their cash cow. This bad decision Saturday was an err on the side of a safe, profitable rematch with Horn and, quite possibly, an equally safe and profitable rubber match. Given the nefarious nature of some boxing decisions, Pacquiao-Horn has to raise eyebrows.
Whatever the reason for the lousy decision-and it could easily just have been a case of a hometown crowd influencing the emotional state of judges who were already swayed by seeing the massive underdog doing much better than expected-the impression was clear. Boxing can't be trusted to deliver as a "real" sport in the "real" world. The bad decision reminded the mainstream world that this sport WILL disappoint in a deep and profound way that other sports don't. Nobody but nobody (other than boxing fans) is okay with a sport where the winner may not win. Sports fans generally don't want to invest their time and energy into a world where the New England Patriots can finish 17 points up, but still lose.
What's so frustrating is that, right up until the very end, this was a tremendous night for boxing. ESPN's broadcast was outstanding; easily the best produced boxing show in a long while. The network had succeeded in creating a big fight atmosphere for a fight that, really, wasn't supposed to be anything other than a squash. If the decision had been honest and/or correct, the show would've ended on a positive, feel-good vibe-boxing would've delivered an exciting evening that could've had the mainstream world buzzing about the quality of the action rather than the injustice of the closing act. Instead, we got a lot of buzz about boxing being awful, corrupt, incompetent, and, just in general, a frustrating cocktease.
By Sunday morning, boxing fans were doing what they do best-- "normalizing" the offense, displaying the sporting world's equivalent to battered wife syndrome by rationalizing the mess. "This wasn't THAT bad of a robbery," they would justify, "and, really, despite the injustice at the end, it WAS an entertaining fight." Boxing's powerbrokers, like a manipulative, abusive spouse, always count on the hardcore fans slipping right back into victim mindset when the dust settles. In the abusive relationship between boxing and its fans, degrees of robbery are discussed and used to calibrate how offended one should be by whatever screw job is trending at the moment and a nice night of fights isn't necessarily ruined by an insulting stab at playing you for a fool. Fans have grown accustomed to being hustled.
The reality, though, is that this wasn't about the hardcore fans this time. The world was watching and boxing had a great chance to ditch the bad reputation it so rightly earned over the years as a sport full of corruption and/or incompetence. Instead, we did nothing but reinforce the public's worst prejudices.
Quick (S)hits:
-- Pacquiao-Horn, btw, had all neutral judgesÂ…like that really matters in boxingÂ…(hashtag Ward-Kovalev).
-- Stephen A. Smith was predictably awful throughout the ESPN telecast, but here's a life hack that may help you out when dealing with any network foolish enough to hire this guy-- Whenever I see Smith talking about anything, I hit "MUTE"...my life has been all the richer for it.
-- The Robert Easter- Denis Shafikov decision on Friday was just as awful as Saturday's shit show in Australia. I had Easter eking out a close decision, but having two 120-108 scores in his favor at the end of the fight was unconscionable.
-- Michael Conlan, who beat roadkill on the Pacquiao-Horn undercard, is a big "meh" to me. I honestly don't see much there. He may have reached his high water mark in "interesting" when he flipped the judges the bird at the Olympics.
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