Thursday, January 12, 2006
A Unified Theory of Boxing and Economics
Winky Wright and Jermain Taylor won't fight because of money. Right now Taylor is fighting no one. Floyd Mayweather might want to fight Wright or even Carlos Baldomir after the latter's victory over Zab Judah last Saturday, but Judah wants to fight Baldomir who only wants either Mayweather or Mosley. Arturo Gatti may want Baldomir who also probably won't want him. And few if any seem to want Ricky Hatton, who just may win a bunch of 2005 Fighter of the Year awards.
John Ruiz wants a rematch with Nicolay Valuev, but his new co-promoter Don King wants to bring the "Russian Giant" to America against someone else. King wants a heavyweight unification tournament, but Bob Arum, now promoter for WBC heavyweight champ Hasim Rahman, doesn't. And whatever happened to the Chris Byrd-Wladimir Klitschko rematch?
Behind all the moral posturing of all these souls is the quest to make as much money as possible. Since boxing has no formal structure like, say, the NFL, no one has to fight anyone, really. And money is at the root of all this delaying, postponing, avoiding, and maneuvering. Meanwhile, we're stuck with "Friday Night Fights".
So here's my solution: Abolish money, everywhere, for good. Then it is guaranteed that everyone, including you and me, will have to fight.
If we abolished money, then we all could drink for free at O'Shea's!
Anyway, boxing is doing a bang-up job of abolishing itself. And I think money is safe, for now at least.
4 Comments:
Did Eddie go to Columbia University, say around 1968?
Abolish money and you abolish boxing.
By 
Brian Moore, at
11:47 AM
I wanted to abolish Columbia University, too, at one point.
If we abolished money, then we all could drink for free at O'Shea's!
By Eddie Goldman, at
2:25 PM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By 
, at
5:14 PM
See, I just abolished this spam post. One down ....
Anyway, boxing is doing a bang-up job of abolishing itself. And I think money is safe, for now at least.
By Eddie Goldman, at
1:03 AM
