There was a bit of an effort to muddy up a pretty good heavyweight scrap this past Saturday because of the “world title” designation attached to it. Mind you, though, this “muddying up” came only from some in the boxing media, who frequently make a habit out of safe, phony outrage.
Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois was for Dubois’ IBF heavyweight title. Dubois, who had become the IBF interim champ by beating Filip Hrgovic this past June, was elevated to full champ status when Oleksandr Usyk vacated his IBF title in order to pursue a Tyson Fury rematch rather than face Dubois (for a second time) in a mandatory title bout.
And none of that matters a damn bit in talking about Joshua-Dubois, the actual fight, which turned out to be a pretty entertaining pummeling of Joshua (which I will talk about in another place, at another time).
The Thursday before the fight, Boxingscene devoted an entire chunk of cyberspace-- 1,707 words to be precise-- on an “IBF, bad” piece, which slammed the sanctioning body for some of its recent star-stripping decisions (“It’s time to disqualify the IBF for hitting boxers and fans below the belts.” Ummm, yeah). The kindest thing you could say about that sure-thing BWAA award-winning commentary is that it was just kind of pointless.
But, as I already mentioned, boxing media loves to focus on the safe, easy targets. Taking shots at the sanctioning bodies is the boxing equivalent of a stand up comedian doing a “how annoying is the wait at the DMV” bit. It’s safe, it’s lazy, and, ultimately, in the case of boxing media, it exists to take the place of any real outrage or reporting that might tick powerful people off and cost the writer a gig or, worse yet, his/her beloved ACCESS.
Not to pick on one opinion piece by one writer on one site, but stuff like this is pretty indicative of the boxing media, as a near-whole, for this last...well...for this entire generation.
Swatting at the shitty sanctioning bodies is like taking some cracks at one of those inflatable clown bop bags that rock back and forth on impact.
“Get it...show your stuff...show your power...let ‘em have it...look at those shots!”
“Squeak...squeak...squeak”
Whenever boxing media wants to look tough and like they’re actually speaking truth to power and not just treading water between media buffets and BWAA awards banquets, they fire off some rounds at safe bad guys, like the sanctioning bodies or some hapless judge or referee. Hell, some of these people are still railing on ring announcer Daniel Hennessey for reading a scorecard decision incorrectly and accidentally declaring the wrong winner in a fight this past May.
It’s undeniable that the sanctioning bodies do some shitty things. But it’s also undeniable that these alphabet organizations are usually just propped up by the sport’s real power brokers to facilitate rotten maneuverings and take any flak that comes from those rotten maneuverings. For the most part, they are just the middlemen. Blasting the alphabets is often like squabbling with a Walmart men’s clothing department manager because XL Dickies cargo shorts now fit like a large.
Ironically, it was the media destroying its own credibility, like when Ring Magazine sold rankings spots in the mid-70s (Search “The Ring Magazine Scandal” and read my chronicling of the sad tale), that led to the sanctioning bodies filling that credibility vacuum and gaining further power and influence.
Boxing media knows this. They know who REALLY calls the shots in this game. And, usually, if you’re off the record, person-to-person, they’ll tell you what’s really what. But, in their work, where it actually counts, they almost always go after the periphery targets because, especially these days, actually speaking truth to power is career suicide.
In a business where every major media outlet is, literally, owned by a boxing company or directly tied to a boxing company, promotion-as-news is the norm. Anything that doesn’t hype a fight, promote a fighter, or, at the very least, push an agreeable narrative, is unwanted. And if anything is put out there that threatens the business of those who maintain these media gigs for the purpose of promotion-as-news, it won’t see the light of day for long (if at all) and the person who created such a thing won’t be employed for long either.
No threats have to be made to the establishment boxing media or to those aspiring to be establishment boxing media. These people are conveniently vacuous and pointless by nature now. It’s almost as if all the gumption and spirit has been genetically bred out of the industry.
That recent Boxingscene IBF article is a perfect example of scathing criticism that is not really all that scathing and not all that critical of anything actually actionable.
But, even in a safe outrage piece, these people sometimes miss the easy layup.
In the case of the IBF, it could be argued that they deserve to be lauded as the one sanctioning body actually willing to set rules/regulations and follow through with them, even when it costs them big money. Agree or disagree with their decisions (I often disagree), they are setting their eliminators and enforcing the results, even when it means pissing off and alienating money men like Canelo Alvarez, Oleksandr Usyk, Turki Alalshikh, and Eddie Hearn.
It should also be pointed out that the IBF’s stubborn unwillingness to bend stands in stark contrast to the WBA’s and WBC’s recent movements, which seem tied to 7-figure “partnership” deals with the Saudis.
And that leads to the painfully blatant lack of rage against certain machines, like the Saudis, for example.
Boxingscene has posted some fairly recent pieces criticizing the Saudis, including one last week from Thomas Hauser, who has been a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing boxing efforts from day one. The site as a whole, however, is late to that party-- almost two years too late and, I’m assuming, only finding critical thought after becoming absolutely certain that no streams of that sweet, sweat filthy lucre would be reaching them.
But even if picking on Turki and his crew wasn’t their thing, boxing is full of misdeeds and malfeasance that deserve to be called out, at their actual source. Boxingscene staffers, for example, could look inward to find ample real exposé material in the way their own organization is run. But that’s a tale for another day…
I’m not saying that this particular Boxingscene article in question is intentionally harmful or intentionally “sleight of hand-y.” It IS, however, a symptom of a media that never had a bite in the first place and is now even more toothless than ever.
In a life-and-death sport that needs an aggressive, persistent, biting watchdog media more than any other, being pointless and wasting time is a real sin.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com.