Saturday, February 12, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

KEVIN IOLE: Boxing needs to rein in sanctioning bodies

At the rate the IBF is going, it soon will declare Joe Louis never held a world title, Rocky Marciano actually was beaten a few times and Sugar Ray Robinson was merely an OK fighter.

The sanctioning body this month is keeping up a better batting average than Barry Bonds.

A week after forcing a lightweight champion to surrender his title, the IBF this week stripped a cruiserweight champion. But this is not a new thing for the pirates at the IBF, who somehow saw fit to strip Erik Morales of their junior lightweight title before he fought Marco Antonio Barrera in November.

Sen. John McCain keeps talking about his desire to reform boxing, yet the federal monitor who was supposedly overseeing the organization in the wake of the bribery conviction of former president Bobby Lee was removed last year without a peep from McCain.

John Bailey, the astute former chairman of the Nevada Athletic Commission, has proposed a so-called black book like the casinos use to keep undesirables out of the sport. The folks who run the WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF ought to get charter membership in Bailey's black book.

The problem with boxing is its every-man-for-himself mentality. It's the promoters, the managers, the booking agents, the sanctioning bodies and, yes, the fighters themselves who are burying the very sport that helps them make a living.

The board of the Association of Boxing Commissions held a meeting at The Orleans last month in which it discussed ratings. Among the suggestions it makes in a draft of a new ratings policy is to eliminate mandatory challengers, interim titles and super champions. It reasserted its demand that the rating of a boxer be based solely upon wins and losses and not on a subjective and, ever-changing, set of criteria.

The ABC also does not want the rating of a fighter tied to the identity of his promoter, manager or any other person the fighter is affiliated with, or upon his attendance at a sanctioning body convention.

The only way any kind of oversight on these organizations will work is for state athletic commissions to assess financial penalties on them for failure to comply.

Nevada should require them to post a bond each year to be given the right to sanction championship fights in the state. Other major boxing states should do the same.

Then, if an organization arbitrarily strips a fighter of a championship or inexplicably drops another in the rankings, it would forfeit its bond.

Julio Diaz voluntarily surrendered his lightweight title last week before he was stripped of it. The IBF wanted him to face its mandatory contender, the completely undeserving Levander Johnson. Diaz was prepared to do that until an opportunity came along to fight WBC champion Jose Luis Castillo on March 5.

Diaz chose a more significant fight against a more difficult opponent that would pay him more money, yet he had to give up his title to do it.

What did Johnson do to deserve a title shot? He's 3-1-1 in his last five fights, getting stopped in the 11th round in an IBF lightweight title bout against Javier Jauregui on Nov. 22, 2003. Johnson's only win since losing to Jauregui was over 21-15-2 Roque Cassiani on March 27.

If the major television networks in boxing -- HBO, Showtime and now ESPN -- would eschew multi-fight contracts, then that would further marginalize the sanctioning bodies. As it is now, if a network has a long-term contract with a fighter and the organization makes a joke of its mandatory challenger, the networks are obligated to broadcast it or be in breach of contract with their stars.

Without the long-term deals, the networks could demand the promoters bring them only the best fights, and that would eliminate such memorable bouts as Roy Jones Jr. vs. Rick Frazier and Bernard Hopkins vs. Morrade Hakkar.

Without some kind of restraint, the IBF might threaten Joe DiMaggio's 56-game streak by stripping a champion a week.

Kevin Iole's boxing column is published Saturday. He can be reached at 396-4428 or kiole@reviewjournal.com.