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The Golden Boy Robbed? Oscar De La Hoya feels gypped. What else is new?

© Roy Pickering

To every rule there is an exception. I love boxing. Yet despite its brutal nature, it is the sport I regularly watch that is most like a beauty pageant in the way it is scored. Not that this was originally the case. In the early days of pugilism, two fighters went at it and continued until only one of them was left standing. Matters did not automatically and inconclusively end when a certain number of rounds had been completed. Until someone knocked somebody out, or somebody quit, they just kept going at it. Eventually this was determined to be inhuman, just as it was decided that fighters must wear gloves rather than fight bare fisted and bash each other's brains in. Boxing continues to be a very dangerous sport, a potentially lethal one. It has plenty of opponents who wish to abolish it altogether. I'm not sure why car racing doesn't seem to have nearly as much opposition even though it has more fatalities and less margin for error. But be that as it may, it is obvious that there is room for improvement in boxing, much reform to be done if Senator McCain ever gets his way. Yet it cannot be denied that the sweet science is far more civilized today than it was at the outset. One result of the efforts to make boxing less barbaric is that at the end of ten to twelve rounds, there are often two men left standing. In these cases the decision about who the victor is must be left in the hands of judges, not unlike a season of American Idol.

The decision on who has won a beauty pageant, or a figure skating competition, or a gymnastics competition is an arbitrary one open to endless debate. For every reason that can be given for why one competitor should be declared the winner, there is a reasonable alternate reason for why someone else entirely deserves the victory. It so happens that with the notable exception of the Tanya Harding / Nancy Kerrigan era, I usually could care less who has won a figure skating competition. As for gymnastics, while I must admit that Paul Hamm's controversial gold medal "victory" in Athens has caught my interest (you have to feel sorry for a guy who is given so little time to bask in Olympic glory, even if you're pretty sure Mary Lou Retton could easily kick the guy's butt in a fight), I typically don't care much about these competitions either. I haven't given a damn who was crowned Miss America since the all too brief reign of Vanessa Williams. However, I often do vest myself emotionally in the outcome of a boxing match. So when the announcer states that we are going to the scorecards to find out what has been decided, this is my least favorite moment of any fight. Regardless of what I have seen up to that point and what opinion I have formed about it, I know that the judges saw matters in their own manner for their own reasons, and their group opinion is the only one that matters. Boxing is notorious for inexplicably reasoned judgments being made. Every time this occurs, I swear along with countless other fight fans that I have had enough of this crooked racket. Too many times, such idiotically rendered conclusions lead me to declare that boxing is not an honorable sport, and therefore not worthy of my attention to it. Yet I am always lured back, for at its best, a boxing contest is an event without peer, a fascinating spectacle to those of us with a little blood lust within our hearts. Anyone who watched the Gatti-Ward trilogy understands what I am talking about. Sylvester Stallone did a wonderful job of fictionalizing the appeal of boxing with his Rocky films, and their immense popularity speaks for itself. But there's nothing quite like the real thing.