Looking for a Lion in the Land of the Hyenas

Once, at the final press conference before the Oscar De La Hoya-Shane Mosley rematch in September 2003, promoter Bob Arum tried to convey the global significance of the confrontation which would take place three days later.

“This fight shouldn’t only be the lead story in the sports section of your newspapers,” Arum lectured reporters. “It should be the lead story on the front pages of your papers. It’s that important.”

My employer, the Philadelphia Daily News, does not publish a Sunday edition, which meant that my story on the outcome of De La Hoya-Mosley II wouldn’t appear until Monday morning in any case. But given the season of the year, I knew there was no chance any boxing match would command the sort of headlines in Philadelphia, in the Daily News or The Inquirer, that Arum was hoping for.

“Bob, I don’t know how to break this to you, but it really doesn’t matter what Oscar and Shane do, ” I told Arum when I spotted him a bit later. “They’re both going to get the snot beaten out of them in my paper, in terms of coverage, by Donovan McNabb.”

I have whimsically characterized the news hole devoted to sports in major dailies to a dead antelope on the African veldt. In my town, the major professional sports franchises – the Phillies, 76ers, Flyers and especially the Eagles – are big lions, leisurely lying by the kill and eating until they’re satisfied. Other sports – golf, tennis and, yes, boxing – are hyenas, trying to sneak in and snatch a bite before the lions swat them away.

As a boxing writer, I recognize the pecking order in sports’ 21st century food chain. Every now and then – like, say, the week that Philly’s franchise fighter, Bernard Hopkins, takes on a De La Hoya or a Felix Trinidad, or for an event on the level of the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson clash – I am temporarily transformed into a big lion, with my coverage displayed accordingly. But the fight ends and the following week I revert back to hyena status. And that’s all right, because I understand the nature of the business and am content with being the very best hyena that I can be.

There is a part of me, however, that wishes I could be transported back to the 1950s, when boxing writers, and the sport they covered, were always big lions. The heavyweight champion of the world was the unquestioned king of the jungle then, in competition only with a select few baseball superstars. NFL, NBA and NHL players, whose salaries were measured in thousands of dollars, were accustomed to taking back seats in the media to big-name fighters, whose annual gross incomes sometimes rose into the millions.

But, as they say, that was then and this is now. Now means a heavyweight championship bout seemingly happens every other week, and the mostly anonymous men who wear the bejeweled belts that once denoted the greatest title in all of sport sometimes are cast in supporting roles to college kids.

This Saturday night, WBO champion Lamon Brewster, possibly the best of the four claimants to heavyweight supremacy, defends his severely devalued title against Belarus’ Sergei Liakhovich, who is a household name only in his own household. The bout will be televised by Showtime from the Wolstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University sometime after 11 p.m., late enough, a public-relations flack noted, for fight fans to watch both semifinal games of the NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis before switching over to boxing.

My take on the timing is exactly what I had passed along to Arum nearly three years ago. Brewster and Liakovich, even if they engage in a slugfest worthy of candidacy for Fight of the Year, are going to be destroyed in the public prints, over the Internet and on SportsCenter, by such basketball players as LSU’s Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Tyrus Thomas, Florida’s Joakim Noah, UCLA’s Jordan Farmar and even George Mason’s Jai Lewis, whom no one outside of the Colonial Athletic Association had even heard of until the past week or so.

When I hear complaints that boxing has tumbled from the summit it once occupied into niche status, it’s hard to argue otherwise. There are reasons for the slippage, not the least of which is reduced Olympic television visibility of a sport that once routinely produced Cassius Clays, Joe Fraziers, George Foremans, Sugar Ray Leonards and Oscar De La Hoyas. The elimination of boxing from free, over-the-air TV and the rise of pay-per-view, which enriches an elite few fighters but limits audiences to a fraction of the viewership for Super Bowls, Final Fours and even tractor pulls, also figures into the equation.

But the fact of the matter is that boxing, in the medium weight classes at least, remains viable and healthy. You can find highly capable and entertaining fighters from lightweight through super middleweight, many of whom have devoted followings. It is the heavyweight division that is in dire distress, afflicted by a prolonged illness which infects the entire industry. That diagnosis is simple because it always has been the big men who have been responsible for maintaining whatever popularity boxing holds among the masses.

Think not? Why do you suppose that Sylvester Stallone, who is maybe 5’9”, decided to make his most famous cinematic creation, Rocky Balboa, a heavyweight? Stallone realized from the outset that Rocky probably wouldn’t have fired the public’s imagination to the degree that it did had the working-class hero from South Philadelphia been, say, a super middleweight or even a light heavyweight. So Sly had himself photographed from low angles, as was the case with an earlier film star, Alan Ladd, to minimize the size difference between himself and the larger men cast as villains. If Shane had been about a boxer instead of a gunfighter, you’d have to figure Ladd, an even smaller guy than Stallone, also would find himself playing a heavyweight.

Just two weeks after WBC heavyweight champ Hasim Rahman retained his title on a desultory draw with morbidly obese James Toney, along comes Brewster-Liakhovich, which takes place three weeks before IBF belt-holder Chris Byrd defends against Wladimir Klitschko in Mannheim, Germany. Lurking in the shadows is 7’2”, 325-pound WBA titlist Nicolay Valuev, as large as a tree and about as mobile.

Somewhere along the line, heavyweight champions have become physically larger than they used to be, but of much-diminished stature, in direct correlation to the proliferation of championships that are divvied up like the take from a convenience-store stickup. In the best of all possible worlds, less is better, but fight fans have been forced to swallow the concept of too much, too many and too often, a witch’s brew that has left them nauseated and discouraged.

Nor is the most frequently suggested remedy, a unification tournament, the panacea which will cure all. Tossing the likes of Brewster, Rahman, Byrd and Valuev into a blender and pressing a button won’t necessarily produce a pugilistic smoothie that can be passed off as the next Marciano, Ali or Tyson. Oh, sure, a unification would unmuddy the waters to an extent, but pointing to the surviving member of the current Unfab Four and saying, “He’s the man” won’t automatically confer upon said designee a true champion’s charisma and talent. Those are qualities which are beyond the ken of any promoter or sanctioning organization.

Observers bemoaning the sad state of the heavyweights frequently mention the exploding popularity of the NFL and NBA as a reason why so few top-tier fighters are rising through the ranks of boxing’s most prestigious weight class. It’s a reasonable theory, and valid to a point. Scads of large, athletic kids who dream of wealth and fame no doubt are bypassing boxing to try their hands at football and basketball.

After his retirement from the ring, Rocky Marciano and his pal, Lou Duva, decided they would hang around NFL training camps in the hope of identifying the next great heavyweight. The person of their choosing would, of course, be big, strong, fast, and susceptible to the notion of a career change.

But Marciano died in a tragic plane crash and the plan never was put into effect. Then again, perhaps it was doomed from the outset. A number of former NFL players – Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Mark Gastineau, Alonzo Highsmith – have experimented with boxing in the not too distant past and, to a man, were found wanting.

Perhaps the most physically imposing of recent heavyweights, Michael Grant, was a 6’7”, 250-pounder with six-pack abs and Arnold Schwarzenegger musculature. His trainer, Don Turner, even went so far as to say that Grant had a chance to become the greatest heavyweight of all time. But the guy who supposedly had the skills to earn a living as a defensive end, small forward or fastball pitcher was exposed when Lennox Lewis and even Dominick Guinn nailed him on the chin.

You have to wonder what might have happened had NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain gone through with that proposed bout with Ali, or had standout running backs Jim Brown and Herschel Walker, who pondered the possibility of trying their hand at boxing, given it their best shot. Maybe they would have smoothly transferred their excellence from the field into the ring. More than likely, they wouldn’t have.

What we do know is this: Marciano, Frazier and Tyson were compact, powerful guys who never could have made it in the NFL or the NBA. Remember how Smokin’ Joe almost was extinguished in the swimming competition of “The Superstars” on ABC? The never-say-die warrior who three times hurled himself at Ali obviously thought that pounding at the water somehow would turn him into Mark Spitz, or at least something buoyant enough to avoid drowning.

The truth is, special heavyweights don’t come packaged in a particular body type. They might not be especially athletic in the traditional sense. Their times in the 40-yard dash or their vertical leaps might not wow scouts at an NFL combine.

But we know them when we see them, and when we do we are generally disposed to hand them the keys to our hearts.

What we see now is miles of mediocrity. And until a savior with a big punch emerges from the wasteland, boxing’s grip on our imagination will continue to loosen.