For the past decade or so, boxing has been in an interesting place. Everyone imagines that the sport is healthiest when there is a dominant heavyweight champion who everyone has to aspire to defeat, and yet the presence of that exact archetype in Wladimir Klitschko seemed to make things less compelling slightly instead of more. The truth is that, for the last decade or so, the real excitement of the sport has been in the lower weight classes. Hell, the proof of this can even be found in the two most recent boxing movies, Creed, and Southpaw. Were the protagonists, or the antagonists, in the heavyweight division? No.
In the world of boxing that is not defined by celluloid, things look equally impressive. We have good-to-great fighters, and the potential for exciting fights, all throughout just about every division. However, bubbling just below the surface is an ugly truth of things, and it is the time to address it. Every one of those fights you could think of, with one or two exceptions, aren’t between American stars.
Canelo-GGG, Gonzalez-Inoue, Lomachenko-Salido are just a few examples. I am sure I could come up with more if I tried.
In fact, as you look further, where exactly are the American stars? This article seeks to find them.
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Before we go too much further, a quick word on the graybeards who you may have thought of as soon as you saw the title of this article.
Hanging over the head of the sport of boxing like a sword of Damocles is, of course, Floyd Mayweather Jr. While his defensive acumen appears to remain sharp the rest of it is an open question. Does he want to box anymore? Can you find an opponent who will A: bring the best out of Floyd as an offensive fighter, and B: be someone we want to see him fight?
The 1st part of that equation might never happen. It’s sad to say, but the Floyd Mayweather who blended sterling defense with crisp combination punching died somewhere after the Oscar De La Hoya fight. If you seek to find the reason why so many people who criticize his "fighting" do so, his unwillingness to let his hands go is it. Not because we want everyone to fight in a blood-and-guts style like Arturo Gatti, because as hard as this might be to believe, that would get boring just as quickly. What we want, though, is for people who have the potential to be great to show the full depth and breadth of all of their skills.
As for the 2nd, that's equally difficult to find. You see, Floyd Mayweather has served boxing with distinction and glory. But, because he's done that for so long, people are tired of him. They're tired of the cars and the act and everything that comes with putting down your hard-earned money to see him.
And as long as that's true, you can't count on him anymore.
And that leaves us with the other graybeard, Andre Ward. Simply put, Andre doesn't fight enough. He has fought four times in 4 years, and against the sort of gallingly bad competition that the "Demographic" would draw and quarter Gennady Golovkin for. (And yes, before you ask, I will get to the demographic in an upcoming article. Suffice it to say; I disagree with their opinions.)
So now with the graybeards out of the way, it is time to move on to the younger generation of those who might be considered stars,
Terrence Crawford, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, and Errol Spence Jr. . 2 out of that foursome in the person of Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter will be fighting each other this Saturday night, in Brooklyn, for one of the small flotilla of belts that can be found in the welterweight division.
(Author's Note: This article was written before Thurman-Porter took place.)
To a man, the 4 of them are all still waiting for the fight that takes them from a star amongst boxing fans to just a flat-out STAR. It might be that Thurman-Porter, even after the postponement, gives us the kind of all-action and high-skill fight we don't get to see too much of anymore. Or it might be another one of those fights that look exciting on paper but turns around to be terrifically stultifying and one-sided in practice. No one will know, least of all the two fighters, until they meet each other in the middle of the ring at the Barclays Center.
The reasons for this gulf between talent and acclaim are myriad. But the most simple, the most basic to understand, are these two.
1: They don't fight enough.
Gone, perhaps for good, are the days when fighters fought more than twice a year. It is, as a result, harder than it should be for a young fighter to endear himself to the hearts and minds of casual sports fans when you aren't fighting enough to show them what you can do, and who you are. It also means that it's far harder to build demand for the sort of super fight that used to make stars, even ones that ended as more of a coronation than anything else. (See Roy Jones vs James Toney for an example of what I mean.)
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Couple this with the idea that there are few fighters now willing to risk their undefeated records for a real challenge, and we end up with a situation where no one moves past potential and what-ifs.
But that, to my way of thinking, isn't the real problem. This is the real problem.
2: USA Boxing is broken and in the late stages of dry-rot.
It used to be that we developed stars at the Olympic Games.
This will not be a referendum on which was the better team, the 1976 unit of Montreal or the 1984 Los Angeles contingent. Both teams gave us all-time greats, Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Spinks in 1976 and Pernell Whitaker and Evander Holyfield in 1984. The argument over which team was better will go on as long as there is a combination of beer and people to discuss it.
Rather, the point is that even without those two supernova teams, the Olympics is always where our best and brightest have been found. Names like Ali, Foreman, De La Hoya, Jones Jr., Mayweather just to name a few.
But now? Now we're being forced to hope and wish that our guys get into position to medal. Gone are the days of our top amateurs coming home with gold medals and polished reputations where people expected a lot from them.
So, with that in mind, I have a useful solution to solve this problem.
Hey, Top Rank, throw some money at USA Boxing. You too, Golden Boy, Main Events, and hell the PBC. You want to be in a position to sign the next superstars, the next Ray Leonard, and Roy Jones? Easy. Build the infrastructure that allows it to happen.
Hopefully, it works. And hopefully by 2020, we have what we need to be elite again.
Video Footnotes:
One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WFNxRhldoQ↩
