Pucks and Punchups

-I apparently never published this last week, so here it is this week-

As the old joke goes, I went to see the fights and a hockey game broke out.

Hockey is a physical game, as Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller would be quick to confirm. Miller found himself the victim of an open ice check from Boston Bruin forward Milan Lucic. Lucic had himself a clear breakaway but nudged the puck too far ahead of himself as he crossed the blue line into the Sabres' zone.

Miller skated out of his crease to to play the puck toward the boards. Lucic was still coming in and "ran into" Miller at about the middle of the face off circle to the right of the net. Miller went down, a brawl nearly broke out and Lucic was given a two minute penalty for charging.

Here's a replay:


This hit is going to be talked about for a while, mostly in the context of trying to determine just how dirty it was. Those on one side will say Lucic didn't have time to avoid the hit and that the goalie should be treated as just another player outside of the goal crease. Those on the other side of the debate will say that Lucic had about 40 feet of ice to avoid a collision and that goalies deserve some special considerations to keep them safe. I'm with the latter group, but that's not what I came here to talk about.

I came to talk about the boxing.

The same night that Miller was getting his bell rung by Milan Lucic, there was what passes for a mega-match up in boxing.

Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao had his third fight with Juan Manuel Marquez. Like Lucic's hit on Miller, there's going to be a lot of talk about this match up.

Not this Pac-Man

The fight went the distance, all 12 rounds, and Pacquiao was awarded a minority. That is, two of the ringside judges awarded more point to Pacquiao and one had the bout scored as a tie. Not quite the one sided victory that many of Pacquiao's more recent fights have been, and not one that many boxing pundits or fans would have given at all.

Fans booed when the decision was announced. This is unusual as Pacquiao is by far the more popular of the two fighters - the crowd should have been happy but they weren't showing it. The commentators in the coverage I was watching thought Marquez had won, the not-so-impartial fans thought Marquez had won, I thought Marquez should have won, so why didn't he?

I've never read the official rules that boxing judges use to determine the winner of a fight, but based on Saturday (and many other similar Saturdays) I figure they can be paraphrased as "give points based on popularity." I don't think I'm alone in my jaded opinion as I've heard allegations of blindness and corruption among the judging panel. This is one of a couple of things that boxing has to address if the sport ever again aspires to interest the public as it did in the days of Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.

Among the other things, nobody really knows who the boxing champion is. Its understandable that there are weight classes, it would be unfair to match a 260 pound bruiser against someone who barely manages to hit 110 on the same scale. But each weight class has five different titles that can be won. With 17 weight classes, that's as many as 85 men who can claim to be boxing champion. And one of the associations has provisions to have two or even three people listed as a champion, so maybe its even more than 85. But some are vacant so maybe there are less than 85. Trying to keep it all straight is a bit like an Abbot and Costello sketch.

This plays into a bigger problem though: catch-weight fights. These happen when a lighter fighter wants to take on a heavier one so they agree to meet somewhere in the middle. On the surface, that seems reasonable, but it means that guys who are "naturally" 154 pounds have to find ways to drop seven pounds so they can participate. Which is their choice if they want to do it or not, but when the heavier fighter is putting up a championship belt (one with an allowance that permits a fighter to be 154 pounds to fight for it) its an unfair advantage for the smaller fighter.

But that's pretty minor to how fights get made in the first place. There's no league in boxing so there's nobody making match ups other than the fighters themselves (or rather, their promoters). And when you leave this sort of thing up to guys like Don King and Bob Arum, egos play far too large a role and fights that should happen either take too long to set up or maybe they don't happen at all. Haye should have fought Klitschko earlier than he did, same with Mosley and Mayweather. And Mayweather will likely never stand opposite Pacquiao in the ring.

When grown men agree to punch each other, these two men make a lot of money.

Just to float a prediction out there: Mayweather would trade equally punches on his shoulders and forearms for shots on Pacquiao's face and then lose the fight because he never smiles and isn't very good at karaoke.

The official reason that this fight hadn't gone forward was because of a disagreement between the Mayweather and Pacquaio

These problems have made boxing a mess. What fans want to see doesn't happen and if it does, it doesn't have the appearance of a fair contest. Much of the attention that was once given to boxing has been turned towards mixed martial arts. This is despite the fact that the average fight boils down to two burly men hugging each other on the ground for four out of every five minutes.

So when I want to watch boxing, I just turn on a hockey game.

It's pretty much the same:

in the first round the combatants just get a feel for each other;


the combatants are generally evenly matched; and


and sometimes fans even get to see a knockout.



And it has the added bonus in that the athletes ensure that the officials remain honest.