Boxing Gets Up Off Canvas

The invention of the remote control channel-changer for televisions may go down as one of the greatest of all time. It is certainly heaven on earth for those of us who abhor commercials yet are too lazy to make the 10-foot trek to and from the tube itself. But last Sunday afternoon, no matter how often I pushed the clicker, all I saw was boxing. And then a strange thing happened: I began to think.

As fight after fight appeared on the screen, whether it was live from Las Vegas or taped in San Juan, the fact that Muhammed Ali "came out of retirement" last week occurred to me. Suddenly, it struck me. Boxing is back, my friends, in a big, big way. My question is why?

The proliferation of the fight game is something we owe not to Ali or Howard Cosell, but to the 1976 Olympics. For it was in Montreal that men such as Sugar Ray Leonard, Howard Davis and Leon Spinks first received national attention and adoration--feelings they regenerated by turning professional.

One could state, and get no argument from me, that Ali carried the sport of boxing from 1966 up until just a short time ago. The name Ali and the word "boxing" were synonymous in most people's eyes. And rightfully so, since the lower weights were producing no one of great charisma, such as a Sugar Ray Robinson, and the heavyweight division, outside of Joe Frazier, simply had no one to offer. Boxing was Ali and Ali was boxing.

But no more. The United States' performance in the Olympic Games, particularly in the lower-weights, has made the sport of boxing bigger than just the heavyweight division. Names like Seales, Leonard and Davis are almost as well known as their heavyweight counterparts. People are beginning to realize that the lower weights are no longer the realm of foreigners, especially Latin Americans.

The same increase in interest in the lower weights can be seen in the classiest division of boxing, the heavyweights. Fighters such as Ken Norton, Jimmy Young, George Foreman and Duane Bobick provide the star, Ali, with a supporting cast for the first time in a long while. There are some serious contenders around, rather than the steady diet of Chuck Wepners, Joe "King" Romans and Ron Standers whom we've seen far too often.

So, with the greatly increased interest in the lower-weights and the rise of serious heavyweight contenders, where does that leave Ali?

He is still very much at the top. But, I contend, he's not as high as he once was; hence, his coming out of retirement. Certainly no one should argue that the primary reason for Ali fighting lies in the money, which is simply too much to give up. But that may not be the only reason.

Ali, as is well-known, has a massive ego. Could not the proliferation of the fight game while he remained in retirement be reason enough to fight again? People are talking so much about fighters like Norton and Young that Ali may feel the spotlight slowly shifting off him towards new athletes. Thus, his "unretirement" takes on almost as much a publicity angle as it does a financial one. Ali says he is the greatest, and may simply want recognition of that fact while it still may be true.

But boxing would not be where it is without him. The sport badly needed Ali for his flamboyance and, more importantly, for his intelligence. In a rapidly advancing technological and intellectual age, boxing's barbarity made it assume an inhuman and primitive quality which ran counter to prevailing ideas.

Ali was the answer. When placed against his greatest rival, Frazier, Ali was not only the floating butterfly and the stinging bee, but also the brain versus the brawn. The same was true in the Ali-Foreman fight.

But, again things change. And the increased intelligence of boxers on the whole is something which can be mutually attributed to society and Ali. Interviews with Norton, Young and a boxer known as Armando Muniz all exhibited the tremendous rise of intellectual capacity in boxers when compared with the older, dumber models of Joe Louis and Rocky Graziano. Intelligence, then, as much as the increased flamboyance of fighters on all levels, has rejuvenated the flame in boxing--one which saw the most boxers in history participate in the New York Golden Gloves competition.

Many claimed that oversaturation, primarily in the form of the old televised Friday night fights, knocked out boxing. Let's say that it was just stunned, because the fight game is game again.