Badges? We Don't Need No Stinking Badges

Looking for a solution to boxing reform that doesn't involve the federal government? We may have one.

Over the years, despite all the criticism it has sustained, the interesting thing about boxing is that I can't recall anyone I have "turned on" to the sport who didn't go on to become completely enthralled by it.

When a friend introduced me to the game, I became one of those people. Part of the attraction, undoubtedly, is the fact that a prizefight represents the most basic and elemental of human competitions - conducted one-on-one, without help from teammates. As they like to say in the gym, you can't make any stops at the gas station. Sure, there's a one-minute rest period between rounds. But if Shaquille O'Neal gets tired, he can always take himself out of a game. Oscar De la Hoya can't.

There's also a level of drama that unfolds in a big fight that other sports can't quite match. It can be a marathon, testing one's courage, will, and stamina, but it's also something that can end at any time. Baseball games go nine innings. Football games have to last a full sixty minutes. Golfers go eighteen holes a day. And a bowling match continues for ten frames. During this period of time, all of the drama in an event can get lost, because the outcome can become inevitable. You know what I mean, if you've seen all the Super Bowls that were essentially over by halftime.

Boxing is different - decidedly different.

In no other sport can a competitor go from a state of being completely hopeless to incredibly hopeful in the space of just a split second. Using a football analogy, one fighter could find himself down 63-0 at the two-minute warning and still have a chance to walk off the field with a victory.

One illustrative example was Mike Weaver, a journeyman heavyweight from Los Angeles whose claim to fame going into a March 1980 fight with WBA champion John Tate was that he had fought gamely before being knocked out by Larry Holmes. Weaver was a muscular type - hence the nickname "Hercules" - and had a potent punch in either hand. But he was not a technician; certainly nothing to equal the pure boxing ability of Tate, the 1980 Olympian.

Tate was able to have his way with Weaver for virtually the whole duration. Weaver fell far behind in the fight, and there seemed to be no way he could win.

But in the background, there was that great equalizer that only boxing can provide.

Tate could not take a strong punch. Weaver could throw one, and that variable alone was always going to keep him in the fight.

As can be the case in boxing, Weaver got back in the fight alright - all at once. Seconds later, Tate was OUT of the fight. Weaver threw a left hook, a right hand, and just like that, with 45 seconds left in a 15-round bout, Mike Weaver was the WBA heavyweight champion of the world.

Aside from what goes on IN the ring, it's the atmosphere surrounding a big fight that has always fueled my attraction to boxing, and no doubt the attraction of others.

In terms of the level of anticipation building to an event, I dare say that the only thing that rivals a major prizefight is probably a big horse race - one of the jewels in the Triple Crown, or the Breeders Cup.

It's one thing for fans to be absorbed by that kind of electricity, but if you're actually involved in the promotion itself, you may be dead tired by the end but you're running on a lot of adrenaline, I can assure you.

There's nothing like the "What If" factor to fuel heated debate about the matchup of one finely-tuned athlete against another. The excitement snowballs. And then, after the requisite pre-fight histrionics, a bell rings and then the matter is either settled, or winds up providing material for more controversy and debate.

And what a great debate it is.

The way I see it, our challenge is to communicate well enough to convey this feeling to the people who have never experienced it, because the sport can indeed become a healthy addiction.

Yes, this is most definitely a sport worth saving.

And we WILL save it.

Those who really love boxing have become frustrated over the years, because the sport seems to have slipped into a cesspool. Maybe that cesspool is no worse than it had been in the '30s and '40s, but the game was more popular at the time - it had less competition from other sports. Furthermore, most of us weren't around then. In the here and now, no matter what has happened to taint the image of boxing, what we've gotten is a lot of talk and very little in the way of action that has been pointed in the right direction.

Obviously, there are many reasons for this. One lies in the fact that there is a major difference between posturing, and taking the kind of measures to attack a problem head-on. Of course, "doing" is harder than "talking". Most, if not all, people have drawn the line at talking. That includes just about everyone in the media. And most people in the industry are apprehensive about stepping up to the plate on any issue, unless it's within the context of an attempt to sabotage a competitor.

Another problem is that, until we came along with "Operation Cleanup", no one was ever really able to get beyond the cliches of boxing corruption - those things that had been covered 'ad nauseum', and that one doesn't have to look to hard to find.

An example can be found in a recent article written by Jack Newfield for Parade Magazine, called "Should We Let Boxing Die?".

It focuses on the usual suspects..

Witness the line: "Where should we point the finger for the slum boxing has become? Squarely at promoters like Bob Arum and Don King, who have had a stranglehold on the sport."

That represents a point of view that is not necessarily out of line, but incomplete - "pedestrian", if you will. I think we've demonstrated that it's a lot more complicated and expansive than that. If King and Arum disappeared from the scene tomorrow, you wouldn't see an improvement in boxing ethics; rather, there would be others to take their place - others who are, or would be, just as "bad" as they are, given the opportunity. You could find some of those people right now - that is, IF you bothered to look.

Newfield's piece describes how (big surprise) the solution to all of boxing's scandalous problems might just lie in the establishment of a national commission. Yeah, I used to feel that same way too. Then I rolled up my sleeves and did some work.

After studying boxing for many years and studying politics just a little, I can tell you without equivocation that politics has a long way to go before it can crack the moral whip on boxing.

There is nothing in the proposed new federal bill that is going to consistently prevent what is alleged to have happened at Top Rank. Obviously, nothing in the EXISTING federal law did it. People - especially those in the media - need to look below the surface to recognize that, but many of them choose not to.

I distinctly remember, during a period when I wasn't writing about boxing, approaching four different winners of the "Nat Fleischer Award", ideally given for "Excellence in Boxing Journalism", with exclusive information on what I thought were some very important stories - later covered in "Operation Cleanup" to much critical acclaim. Hey - it's not like I was a bad source, right? But none of those guys ever followed up with the leads I gave them. Maybe they didn't care enough. Maybe they didn't know HOW. Draw your own conclusions.

With all due respect to Newfield, who is one of the quality writers of our time, the idea that the hero of his piece, John McCain, would ride in on the proverbial white horse, solving boxing's problems with national commissions, more unenforced, unconstitutional federal legislation and bigger, more intrusive government initiatives, is old and tired.

REAL solutions won't come from your elected officials. What you get, mostly, are measures that are more or less "symbolic". It's not that I consider McCain to be "just another politician" in the pejorative sense. On balance, he's got more guts than most of them. And I think he has at least some concern about the future of boxing. But the question is, how much? How far is he willing to go? Well, not enough to go beyond the surface. Not enough to seek out the best information possible. Not enough to find out what might constitute real boxing reform. and certainly not enough to go out of his way to get any U.S. Attorney's office interested in prosecuting a case under the Ali Act.

And while there are ill-informed members of the media taken in by his "crusade", McCain still finds it impossible to get away from "politics as usual". I'll let you in on a little something. While we don't want to ignore anything, and recognize that if laws have been broken the situation needs to be dealt with, there's still a part of me, and others in this industry, wishing somebody would say the whole Top Rank thing were just a big mistake - because boxing doesn't really need the black eye. You know what I mean?

McCain, though, is different. For him, this is like a Super Bowl. He's looking for as many indictments to be handed down as possible, as a way of creating a scandal substantial enough to push his Professional Boxing Amendments Act through the House of Representatives. I am told that his right-hand man on boxing - Ken Nahigian - was looking for people to "interpret" wiretaps of Top Rank's phone lines for the FBI. So don't have any illusions about whether McCain has his hand on this investigation. He's rooting pretty hard for something to happen, so he can get what he wants out of the deal.

That's not leadership.

It's naked opportunism.

Just watch - when the indictments come out, you'll start reading a lot of quotes from McCain, who all of a sudden will be so very, very concerned about the sport's "integrity". And oh by the way, he has this bill...........

Believe me, I can appreciate the concept of opportunism. As some of you may know, I am running for political office myself. But unlike McCain, I am on this case 365 days a year. And there's nothing phony or artificial about what I plan to do........

.............which is to come up with a better way to deal with all of this.

On April 30, 2004, I walked out of a post office here in Indiana, having mailed out three registered letters to the boxing commission in Utah. That moment marked something that, when all is said and done, will have become the beginning of a long-term change in the landscape of boxing. And though few people realized it yet, within twenty-four hours it was going to be a literal "May Day" for any unscrupulous operator intent on dishonoring the game of boxing.

It was the first official action of something I'm calling the "Boxing Oversight Task Force", which will operate under the auspices of the International Brotherhood of Prizefighters (IBOP). The task force is comprised of individuals who are passionate about the future of the sport, committed to positive change, willing to get up off their ass to do something about it, and unwilling to take "no" for an answer.

On an overall basis, I can put the objective of this organization into a nutshell - to eventually ensure that everybody in this industry is motivated to do business the right way - thus having the long-range effect of changing the sport for the better.

How is that going to be happen, you ask?

By hook or crook, so to speak.

What I mean is this - if this kind of movement gets you inspired enough to do the right thing, that's great. If you wind up doing the right thing out of pure fear - that's fine with me. If our efforts cause someone who refuses to do the right thing to lose his/her job, in a way that it serves as an instructive example for others, so be it. I don't care how it happens. All I can tell you is that it's going to happen.

It's not that we are asking people to start doing things in a different way. We are not, in fact, asking anything. What we are saying is that, depending on your role, if you make the decision to act unethically, incompetently, and/or inefficiently, there is quite possibly going to be a price to pay, and our commitment is to follow through to make sure of it.

If you're in the industry and you want to help us by joining this cooperative effort, we'd be happy to have you. I communicated that when I foreshadowed this in the 100th Round of "Operation Cleanup 2".

But we won't be short-circuited by those who don't want to cooperate. Neither are we going to be dependent on politicians doing anything with us.

Certainly we are going to construct what we think would be beneficial changes in legislation, or entirely new legislation altogether. Hopefully we will have an open line of communication with most athletic commissions. But let there be no misunderstanding - we are completely prepared to do this totally separate and apart from the current regulatory structure in place in this country.

Needless to say, there's an awful lot to do.

There is no question, for example, that the rights of fighters have to be protected. They're the performers. There is nothing I've seen in the union (or quasi-union) movement that shows me they will ultimately have the ability or inclination to do this. The task force will seize upon situations where fighters appear to have absolutely been wronged. If a promoter or manager has robbed from a fighter, or if a fighter has been stiffed by a promoter on a purse, you can rest assured that, with the proper evidence at our disposal, we will become involved. The part of the Ali Act that demands promoters make certain financial disclosures to fighters may be something the U.S. Attorney has chosen to ignore, but the task force will not, and will in fact eventually be in a position to seek its own enforcement, even if it means obtaining a lawyer for a fighter and making sure that lawyer gets paid.

Of course, since we happen to know a little about this business, we realize it's not always a one-way street. It may be John McCain's position that there is no dynamic other than the naive, helpless fighter in a never-ending battle against the heartless, greedy promoter, but we know better than that. We understand that fighters don't always do the right thing by their people either, whether those people are trainers, managers, or promoters.

Our message to fighters is crystal clear - if you do business in an ethical manner, and you are in the right, you will finally have someone in your corner to educate and guide you; someone who is completely prepared to walk the walk; someone who's not scared to get his hands dirty; someone who will fight for your rights and do everything possible to get justice for you. On the other hand, if you're the type who's always looking for someone else to take advantage of; whose concern is to advance a selfish agenda; who's constantly on the lookout for a "sucker" and has no respect for agreements, do not expect any help from us.

That's MY system of checks and balances.

The message to promoters, matchmakers, and managers is that we are going to fill the vacuum the commissions are either too ill-equipped or too indifferent to fill. At the same time, however, we respect your roles enough that you deserve to get your own house in order without the interference of politicians and bureaucrats, who don't know anything about the business and in fact may wind up destroying it completely, even if it's by mistake. Yes, critics would say that the industry has had a lot of time to straighten itself out, yet hasn't. But maybe that's because the right leadership has never existed to make an element of self-government possible.

Well, it does now.

I can foresee that our greatest area of concentration is going to be the state boxing commissions of this country. The reasons for it are simple - these are supposed to be the people who defend the integrity of the game, but often do not. They operate largely in secret when they have no business doing so. And they are comprised of the only people in or around this industry who have chosen to live on the public dime. Like it or not, they have standards to meet and must learn to live up to them. Unfortunately, what we get out of them is a service that is largely SUB-standard.

Being over-officious is not the same as taking charge of a situation. Being disengaged is not the same as "letting the free market take its course". Most commissions don't have the slightest idea how to conduct themselves, and we're going to point them in the right direction - with emphasis.

That means we're going to keep a very close eye on them. We're going to make sure commissions act in compliance with public records laws. We're going to push them on safety issues. We're going to take them to task on quality control. We're going to point out their conflicts of interest. We're going to determine whether state commissions are performing their duties in accordance with state and federal law. And when they don't, they'll have trouble.

For those boxing commissioners who consciously make the decision to lay down on the job, or who don't know HOW to do their job, be forewarned - only professionals are going to be tolerated.

When we encounter something that is particularly out of sorts; that is, where a public official engages in activity that is contrary to the law, sound public policy, or the best interests of boxing, we are going to pursue that as vigorously as possible. The way we're going to do it, in most cases, is to first contact the commission itself to see if it is interested in taking any corrective action. If we encounter no response on that level, we will continue to go up the bureaucratic ladder until we find someone in state government who cares a little bit more about accountability than the boxing commission does.

Of course, I'm operating on the assumption that somewhere within the structure of a state bureaucracy, there's got to be someone who cares or who can't afford the embarrassment. I guess you can say we're looking for that person.

Make no mistake - we will do whatever we have to do to get action. We will flood the state capitol with registered letters. We will make phone calls. We will fax. We will e-mail. We will submit public records requests. We will file ethics complaints. We will engage attorneys if we need to.

To date, boxing commissions have been among the most autonomous agencies in government. Since no one in state government considers boxing to any kind of priority, beyond a means to generate some tax revenue, and because bureaucrats generally don't know the sport, it has been completely possible for this to happen.

That's about to end. Let the message to commissions be clear - finally, somebody is going to be watching you. In fact, MANY people are going to be watching, and when you are presented with a choice to do the right thing but don't, your superiors are absolutely going to know about it. And we'd be delighted to educate them, if need be.

It goes without saying that we will communicate our message to the press as well. But we won't be talking just to the boxing press. Our intention is to attack the situation from all angles - general sports editors and columnists, public affairs correspondents, consumer advocates in the media, and political writers. Along the line, someone is going to respond to us and follow up, because we are going to do a very good job of describing the problem and articulating our position.

If you are a boxing commissioner, I would advise you NOT to take this lightly. Many of you are familiar with the kind of effect we have had in the recent past. Some of you don't like me, and some of that dislike is borne out of fear. I can tell you this - if you were worried about some of my stuff before, you're going to be positively mortified now.

And if you don't believe it, just go ahead and try me.

In essence, I am simply taking what I have been doing for the last couple of years and bringing it to a whole new level.

And lest anyone think we are going to be one-sided, such is not the case. When we find a manager or promoter who is demonstrating new and unique ways to look out for their fighters' interests, both in and out of the ring, we are going to make sure we note that and use it as an instructive model. We will salute promoters who pledge to do the right thing by that endangered species - the paying customer - and deliver on that promise. We will make special mention of commissions that go above and beyond the call of duty in protecting the best interests of boxing.

The positives in this game not only need to be recognized, but celebrated. And we will do just that.

Of course, we are not a governmental regulatory agency, although I would say what we're doing is a great nucleus for the kind of model that can be implemented someday in place of public regulation.

We are not a political organization, although we understand that when you address the subjects of boxing regulation and reform, you can't help but to "touch" politics in some way. When you talk about boxing commissions, which are a part of state government, and traditionally a repository for special favors and perks, you're looking at a political atmosphere, and we are keenly aware of that.

And so as long as that's the case, perhaps it's time to introduce a new kind of politics to the table, at least as far as this industry is concerned.

Yes, it's the politics of activism, but even more accurately, the politics of pro-activism.

It's a brand of politics based on shaping the argument better than the next person, standing on firm moral ground, and having the absolute conviction to follow through with an aggressiveness that equals or exceeds that of the other side.

It is the politics not of blackmail, but of letting your opponents know you have more information at your disposal than they do, and are perfectly willing to put that information to use unless a satisfactory and righteous solution is brought forward.

Yes, it's the politics of pressure; the politics of shaming people into doing the right thing, at risk of complete embarrassment.

It is most definitely NOT the politics of pure complaint.

It is NOT the politics of whining.

It's not the politics of asking, it's the politics of declaration.

It is not the politics of force, but rather, of FORCING the issue, dealing from a position of strength, not weakness.

Yes, sometimes it's the politics of fear, but this time the fear is on the other end, because sometimes that's the only language people in power understand.

It's the kind of politics that says conflicts of interest and (someone in particular should be paying serious attention here) abusing the authority that comes with one's position will be dealt with harshly.

It's the politics of anger. And by the way, don't let anyone tell you that's a bad thing. Historically speaking, nothing's ever changed for the better without someone getting mad about it first. Not only are we mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore, but we're also in a position to do something about it.

It's the politics of taking the politics OUT of politics, if you know what I mean.

Call it ANTI-politics, if you will.

And the best part about it is that, unlike most commissions I know of, the work of the Boxing Oversight Task Force is going to be done in the open. Every piece of correspondence we send out is going to be available for inspection through the IBOP website (http://www.ibopboxing.com).

That's the commitment to openness on the part of the International Brotherhood of Prizefighters.

Let's see if those governmental agencies, supposedly subject to public records laws, can match that.

No more secrets, ladies and gentlemen.

If you're in government, and you don't want to deal with what we're about to do, or you think we're going to disappear, then feel free to avoid us, or cover things up - let's see how that works out for you in the end.

So go ahead and keep your stinking badges.

I won't need one.

Never have.