2007 ENDS WITH HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

by Ron Borges

Mark Twain once said, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.'' Prize fighting can now say the same.

Old line media has for years been predicting the end of boxing as a viable sport but 2007 made clear that light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins was, as he often insists he is, right when he said earlier this year, "As long as there are ghettos, there'll be big fights.''

After years of short sightedness on the part of those running the sport, boxing seemed to finally realize in 2007 that fight fans need only one thing to return to arenas in droves - compelling matches. Whether the change in outlook that led to a string of high-profile and highly profitable matches between some of the best fighters in the world was a result of a sudden change in philosophy, a realization that the Old Media was going to be right if something didn't happen soon to alter the landscape or the growing competition from mixed martial arts, what boxing gave its fans this year were fights like De La Hoya-Mayweather, Cotto-Mosley, Taylor-Pavlik, Calzaghe-Kessler, Mayweather-Hatton, Pacquiao-Barrera II, Vazquez-Marquez and on and on.

Every weight class seemed to spawn at least one fight of note, from flyweight Nonito Donaire's stunning one-punch knockout of then undefeated champion Vic Darchinyan to heavyweight Samuel Peter getting off the deck three times to defeat Jameel McCline. There was action everywhere you turned, especially at the box office and on pay-per-view, where new records were established that spoke volumes about the future of the sport.

"There's no doubt boxing is the comeback sport of the year,'' said HBO Sports' Pay-Per-View VP Mark Taffet and who could quarrel with that?

Record crowds filled the MGM Grand Garden Arena and closed circuit venues around Las Vegas both at the start of the year when Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather combined to put 40,000 people into seats in Las Vegas to watch them live or on closed circuit while setting a pay-per-view record of 2.4 million buys on May 5. Those numbers produced the highest grossing fight in boxing history, $134.4 million domestically and $165 million worldwide, and a record $19 million live gate.

But it was not just one mega-event that signaled the revival of boxing. It was the 50,000 who jammed Millennium Stadium in Wales to watch undefeated super middleweight champions Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler unify the 168-pound title. Such was the drawing power of that match that it has set in motion negotiations for a similar fan-friendly showdown in 2008 between Calzaghe and Hopkins, the 43-year-old light heavyweight champion who has already turned that fight into a jingoistic battle of national interest after British fans of Ricky Hatton booed the national anthem before his losing effort against Mayweather on Dec. 8 in Las Vegas.

Boxing's return to sporting prominence in 2007 has truly been global. Arenas in Germany have been regularly packed and the same has been true in Great Britain where their top stars - Calzaghe, Hatton and to a lesser extent rising prospect and 2004 Olympic sliver medalist Amir Khan - are packing arenas.

"There's a feel-good factor about British boxing at the moment,'' England's leading promoter, Frank Warren, told the Sunday Times' Brian Doogan. "It's a renaiisance, if you will.''

In the United States boxing returned with a bang from coast-to-coast in 2007, filling not only Las Vegas' casino-backed arenas but also the Mecca of the sport - Madison Square Garden in New York - where welterweight champion Miguel Cotto has become a guaranteed box office hit.

Cotto had the old building on 33rd and Broadway rocking in June when he belted out New York native and two-time former world champion Zab Judah and then did it again in the fall with former three-time champion Shane Mosley. Originally the upper reaches of the Garden were not going to be used for that fight but such was the demand for tickets that it was opened up late in the process. Although the fight did not sell out because of the late ticket release the unexpected demand was another signal of the sport's renewed viability after a half decade or more of seeming sonambulance.

Cotto out pointed Mosley in a competitive affair to establish himself as just what Mayweather now needs - another undefeated welterweight opponent who can make a strong case that he can beat the recognized pound-for-pound champion. The fact that Cotto is Puerto Rican only increases his selling power because there are no more loyal fight fans today than Latino fans.

There are roadblocks to such a 2008 showdown, as there always seem to be, because Cotto is promoted by Mayweather's sworn enemy, his former promoter Bob Arum. But where once those kind of problems seem to consistently prevent fans from seeing the matches they wanted Arum has showed a willingness in 2007 to bury the hatchet for business reasons when he co-promoted with De La Hoya, who left him six years ago to form his own promotional company in a bitter breakup.

Only seconds after Mayweather first said he was bored with boxing and would consider retirement at age 30 (a threat he first made after defeating Arturo Gatti and then reiterated after the De La Hoya fight) he added he might be talked out of that, "If they give me a price I can't resist...''

That price could come from De La Hoya's company trying to make a match for Mosley or it assuredly would come from a Cotto fight, which figures to be another mega-event because of Cotto's swelling popularity among boxing's fastest-growing audience and Mayweather's universal acceptance as the best fighter in the world and also perhaps it's most arrogant.

The strongest possibility, if 2008 continues in the same vein as this year, is that both fights will be made despite Arum's claims that "If (Mayweather) thinks he has a chance to lose he won't take a fight.''

That is nonsense going all the way back to when Mayweather defeated Genaro Hernandez to win his first world title at an age when many boxing experts felt he was still wet behind the ears. Arum's words clearly were designed to goad Mayweather into accepting a Cotto fight but the driving force behind it is that 2007 proved boxing fans will pay record sums if they are given the kind of competitive matches the sport's proud history was built on.

Fight fans got them at every level this past year and they responded with their support at a time when newspapers have cut back on coverage and magazines like Sports Illustrated seem obsessed with the thought that the only storyline in boxing is asking every time there's a big fight if it will be the last Big Fight.

Since there were at least a half dozen such fights in 2007, the answer would seem obvious by now. Newspapers should be more concerned with their own demise than with that of boxing, which finally seemed to remember the formula that for so many generations made it one of the country's leading spectator sports.

"This has been one of boxing's best years,'' said De La Hoya, whose Golden Boy Promotions did pay-per-view fights that produced over 4 million buys in 2007. "It was 12 months that have shown how great this sport can be when you put the best fighters in against each other on a consistent basis. Boxing is alive and well.''

That seems true at every level. ESPN2's weekly "Friday Night Fights'' series and its summer series, Wednesday Night Fights,'' had its highest ratings in 2007 and consistently outperformed the NHL and at times the NBA. Hits on the boxing area of major websites like Yahoo.com began to rival those of Ultimate Fighting, the most popular version of MMA, by late in he year.

ESPN also last year joined forces with the creators of "The Contender'' series to produce a reality boxing show that consistently drew a solid and loyal following and led to a Contender final so stirring between Sakio Bika and Jadon Codrington that some argued it deserved to be named Fight of the Year even though it was between a young prospect and a former title contender.

The likely winner of that award from the Boxing Writers Association of America however was a rematch between two super bantamweights, Israel Vasquez and Rafael Marquez, a bloody affair like their first encounter that resulted in a dramatic though controversial 6th round technical knockout victory for Vasquez. In years past such a rematch would seldom have been allowed to happen but 2007 saw a renaiisance of sanity in the sport.

Already a rematch is set for March 15, 2008 between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez, who fought a draw in 2004, after years of talk but no action on creating a second fight. Marquez was floored three times in the first round of that fight but after the cobwebs cleared he got up and rallied to come within a whisker of upsetting Pacquiao. Stirring as that fight was, no one was able to force a rematch because of squabbling over purses and efforts to protect each from the other by short-sighted promoters and managers. Such problems had for years plagued boxing and resulted in a growing distrust among the fans and the media of those who ran the sport and what resulted was a drop off in interest.

But that all changed in 2007. The fact of mixed martial arts' growing popularity seems to have contributed to a return of sanity among fight promoters and TV executives and hence the making of the matches fans wanted to see. Predictably boxing fans responded.

Remarkably, all this has been accomplished in 2007 without much help from the long dormant heavyweight division. As one former television executive would regularly say, boxing was really two businesses.

"There's boxing and then there's heavyweight boxing,'' he remarked in the heyday of Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis but those days are behind us even if the 43-year-old Holyfield is not. There was not a compelling heavyweight fight all year and as the smaller weight classes began to write the headlines (and lay claim to the pay-per-view money) even the heavyweights seemed to begin to get it.

Early in 2008 there will be unification fights between IBF champion Wladimir Klitschko and WBO title holder Sultan Ibragimov and WBC interim champion Samuel Peter craves a shot at the winner, as does WBA champion Ruslan Chagaev. Perhaps it has always been thus but the difference is that 2007 showed it can actually happen.

Peter's road to a title shot against champion Oleg Maskaev last year was symptomatic of the old ways that left boxing tied in knots and which seemed to have been rejected for the greater good of the sport. Peter fought a title eliminator to earn the right to face Maskaev only to be told after the fact he had to win a second eliminator to hold that position because the alphabet organizations also known as Los Tres Banditos (WBC, WBA, IBF) were trying to maneuver Vitali Klitschko in ahead of him.

Good sense and good lawyers prevailed however and now Peter will get his chance in 2008 to try and see if either he or the younger Klitschko can revive interest in the most important division in the sport.

Young prospects Eddie Chambers and Kevin Johnson seem the best hope for the moment that an American can somehow emerge and reclaim the title from the stranglehold Eastern European fighters presently have on the division as each laid the ground work for moving into the heavyweight's upper echelon last year. If an American heavyweight emerges who can electrify crowds, rather than plod his way to victory, the state of the sport will only continue to improve but what 2007 showed is that it's not necessary that the heavyweight division be healthy for boxing to prosper. Someone like Kelly Pavlik took care of that with one crushing right hand plus two mind-numbing uppercuts to the head of then undefeated middleweight champion Jermain Taylor.

The Youngstown, Ohio product became an instant celebrity on Sept. 29 not only because of the dramatic way he got off the floor from what seemed to be a sure knockout loss to leave Taylor in a heap on the canvas in the 7th round, but also because of his down-to-earth personality and willingness to grant Taylor an immediate rematch.

The fact that it was agreed to so quickly was another example of how things changed in boxing last year. Although Taylor had a rematch clause in his contract at 164 pounds, in the past such legally binding options seldom led to anything but lawsuits and the stripping of world champions of their titles. This year, however, the fighters were willing to fight their most dangerous opponent and most of the people advising them gave in to the business reality of what has happened in boxing and put them at risk in exchange for continuing the revitalization of their sport.

The fans rewarded boxing for its efforts by coming out in droves. Not so long ago, Las Vegas would be blacked out if a big fight was in the city. This year demand to see De la Hoya-Mayweather and Mayweather-Hatton was such that closed circuit locations were added in casino ballrooms after each fight sold out in less than an hour.

This is not just an American phenomenon either. There has been a renaissance in British boxing as well and the rest of Europe has followed suit, especially in Germany. Many of the top German and English fighters, as well as Kessler in Denmark, earn enough in their native country not to have to come to the United States to make their fortune. Yet in 2007 they came any way, driving boxing to heights it hasn't seen since the 1980s and early 1990s, before the shenanigans of promoters, sanctioning bodies and Tyson conspired to marginalize boxing in the public's consciousness.

Boxing is not yet what it was in the Golden Age of sports, when the top fighters would fill ballparks like Yankee Stadium, but even that may become a reality in 2008 if De La Hoya's now annual return to the ring is contested in his venue of choice - Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The only reason such a proposal is under discussion is that 2007 was the kind of year boxing needed - a knockout in the ring and at the pay-per-view window.