Boxing Has Become A Circus

Professional boxing has now become a haven for clowns. It is no longer regarded as the sport where people once reverenced it as the sweet science. Boxing has now become a sport reduced to more ridiculous and laughable sideshows than for putting on great performances. The people who continue to fork over gobs of money for pay-per-view boxing telecasts are either die-hard fans or individuals who really don’t care about wasting their hard-earned cash.

Boxing has become a sport that no longer deserves the right to force people to empty their wallets for pay-per-view viewing. The last several years have proven that. Boxers duck each other and quality fights come around about once a year-if we’re lucky. Boxing is now facing a crisis with a widening disconnect with its fans that seem to have grown tired of all the boorish behavior and outlandish antics.

 The Bernard Hopkins–Chad Dawson WBC and Ring Magazine light heavyweight championship bout at Staples Center in Los Angeles only fueled more rumblings and speculation that boxing has become nothing but a sport regulated to cruel jokes, insults and cartoonish acts in and out of the ring. It would not be difficult to put the result of the Hopkins-Dawson fight in those terms.

And it comes at a time when boxing could ill-afford it. The conclusion of the of the scheduled 12-round fight between Hopkins and Dawson gave boxing one more black eye it didn’t need. After the calamity of the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Victor Ortiz fight in September, boxing should have learned its lessons from that title fight.  Apparently, it didn’t.

And as a result, fans across the world thought they were watching the WWE and all of its fake wrestling glory when they tuned to see Hopkins earn a disqualification and be sent to a local Los Angeles area hospital to see if he broke his shoulder. The long awaited match between the 46-year-old Hopkins and the hard-charging Dawson (31-1) concluded in a cloak of controversy in the fight’s second round. Behind on points, Hopkins jumped on Dawson’s back early in the second round.

Dawson was not down with Hopkins (52-6-2) piling on his back. With a shove to the midsection and a dip with the shoulder, Dawson sent Hopkins sprawling over the ropes and out of the ring. Match over. Hopkins was sent to the hospital. Fans felt cheated. Some people called for an investigation of the fight. Dawson thought Hopkins deprived him of showcasing his boxing skills to the rest of world. He would then later chastise Hopkins and another boxer with some choice words at an animated press conference after the fight.

Hopkins, who goes by the boxing moniker “The Executioner,” made the theatrics come alive before one punch was thrown, entering the ring with a cut out, black ski mask covering his face. Hopkins wasn’t finished with his pre-show act, operating a slash sign to the throat that he thought would intimidate Dawson. It didn’t quite work out the way Hopkins had hoped.

Dawson came into the ring with a chip on his shoulder, a man looking to unleash his fistic weapons on his opponent. Hopkins, on the other hand, looked as though was ready to go to the next Halloween party. Sadly, for this proud champion and for boxing, this is what the sport has been reduced to.