Probably a good idea to not get too idealistic and instead stay practical.
So what can be done?
If we look at the current situation professional boxing on the surface is a about winning world championship belts.
These belts are owned by the
sanctioning bodies who have ridiculously continued to offer an increasingly greater number of them in an attempt to reap a greater amount of sanctioning fees.
However the fights for these belts are arranged by various
promoters who are not particularly interested in these belts, only amount of revenue the fights amass.
This inevitably means they have to work with various
media outlets such as Sky Sports. These media outlets can then decide whether they want to make the fights available on a pay per view basis to extract the maximum amount of money out of the most enthusiastic diehard fans.
The fights themselves are generally held where the various parties believe they will generate the most money. This could be anywhere in the world but no doubt the place that consistently generates the highest revenues is Las Vegas, and this falls under the jurisdiction of Nevada Athletic Commission headed by executive director Bob Bennett.
Other locations will have their own
commissions. In the UK it's the British Boxing Board of Control.
So where does all this leave the boxers and the fans?
In a rather difficult place if they want to retain any degree of independence. Neither has much control or say over what fights can be made, or even if they will ever be made.
Furthermore the system is highly susceptible to corruption as its main motivation is profit over fairness, safety or the long term well being of the boxers. This has led many to suspect that a tacit form of collusion, a cartel if you like, exists whereby some more marketable boxers (cash cows) are given far too many advantages and privileges over their unfortunate opponents who may be better boxers but just happen to be less marketable.
It's a dirty business no doubt, but perhaps its dirtiest secret is that it's the promoters who pay for judges.
Excellent article by Paul Magno here.
http://theboxingtribune.com/2017/01/18/ ... .%E2%80%9D
So given this disgraceful state of affairs can anything be done?
It doesn't look like it.
It would take an act of government to take away control from the existing self regulating (ie thick as thieves) cartel of promoters, sanctioning bodies, boxing commissions, and media outlets.
Only then, maybe, a governing body such those that run other sports such as football (FIFA), tennis (ITF), formula 1 (FIA), golf (IGF), cricket (ICC), olympics (IOC), chess (FIDE) etc could be set up.
Some of those sports with single governing bodies are not without issues, but they do have a central headquarters which can be directly accountable to government scrutiny.
The Olympic Games and the football world cup have had numerous issues with the awarding of these events.
Alas in boxing as things stand, a rather shadowy collective association runs professional boxing. As long it continues to do so, we cannot expect any change.
