|
THE CURRENT COMPETITION MODEL Boxing and MMA: An Anomaly There are only two sports where there is no season, no national league, and the promoter who has the athlete's contract can pick opponents forever (including opponents which are also owned by him) and win world championships. As everyone knows, a professional fighter's manager, promoter, and pay-per-view television can choose his opponents throughout his career. Whether he becomes ranked is dictated by ranking committee chairman of santioning organizations. Corruption and Arrogance In boxing, everyone knows how corrupt the process is. Executives at one of the two major television companies were overheard to arrogantly say about their domination of televised boxing, "Where else can they go?" HBO, Showtime, the major promoters, and the sanctioning organizations love this system because they have a better chance of determining and controlling the championship fights. Their boxers sign multi-fight contracts with them, get rich, and don't make too many waves because they don't want to upset either member of the pay-per-view duopoly of TVKO (HBO) and SET (Showtime). In MMA, a recent letter from the Director of Research for the Culinary Union in Las Vegas to the Director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington D.C. requests the Federal Trade Commission launch a formal investigation into whether the anti-competition business practices (as enumerated in the letter) by Zuffa LLC, the corporate owner of the Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC), the world’s largest promoter of professional mixed martial arts, violate U.S. antitrust laws. . Rights and Income Fighters and their managers sign away foreign television rights. Conveyance of all digital rights is a standard provision in every major promoters' contract. The fighters don't have a clue about the various indirect and more subtle indirect sources of income from their fights -- like using the big fights as "leaders" is developing new cable subscribers -- and income from foreign television advertising. TIME FOR CHANGE New Model The time has come to create a new competition model. Television should have to negotiate for the rights with the fighters as a group on a collective basis, similar to the competition of NASCAR, the NFL, and other professional sports that determine world champions. A Level Field The playing field should be leveled so that the matches have the competitive integrity of all other professional and amateur sports. Why not MMA and boxing? Control? Money? The media duopoly? The UFC? De La Hoya? Arum? King? The sanctioning organizations? Experts in a Bad System Insiders, gurus, promoters, and "experts" in fight business history always insist that they should be the ones to reform the structure and competitive process because they know the most about the existing system. No chance. The fight business needs those who know the most about the best system, not the existing system. Let's face it, most boxing and MMA pundits who have been around awhile tend to think inside the box. With a new unfamiliar model, they would no longer be the experts. That would be good. It's hard for them to conceive of scenarios that fall outside their experience or knowledge base or, heaven forbid, leave them with no influence or contractual control over the fighter who wins and the television rights. Objectivity Most promoters, television executives, fronts for either, and the sanctioning organizations cannot be depended upon to improve professional MMA or boxing beyond talk and cosmetic changes designed to leave them in some semblance of control. AN ABSURDITY It would be absurd to permit the owner of a franchise team in the NBA or NFL to pick his team's opponent in every game all season, year after year, based entirely upon financial considerations. He would never be allowed to bribe his way, either through a rigged purse bid or in an under-the-table deal with the Commissioner or the head of officials on the field, or both, all the way to a Super Bowl or the NBA Championship game. He could never negotiate the date, location, and financial terms of the game by playing other team owners (fighters) against each other until he has unfairly maximized last minute leverage against everyone before a rigged deadline for a rigged bid. It is a totally absurd notion -- but not in the MMA or professional boxing. NCAA The NCAA has stringent recruiting regulations at the college level. At the pro level, the NBA and NFL draft process is structured to democratize the access to talent. Each game, who plays whom and when, is scheduled fairly and under the rules. The competitive process leads to playoffs and finals. This ensures an open and honest process and equitable revenue sharing and rules of competition from beginning to end. Amateur Boxing Amateur boxing has computerized matchmaking in its national tournaments to ensure fairness. Other sports have established rules for fair competition between teams and scheduling of games leading to championships. They distribute equitably the television revenue and make competition as fair as possible for the athletes. FAIRNESS FOR FIGHTERS AND FANS In other sports, the media and sports fans know the process is fair and the champions deserve their honors. The fans pay for and the producers broadcast a legitimate sports product. They rarely get that in the fight business -- never have -– because the promoters have always rigged it contractually to maintain their unfair control over the winner (the money). They’ve made an art form out of rationalizing the system and have always denied any favoritism. Television to this day, for monetary reasons and because there was little they could do about it, has looked the other way while the fans and the fighters have been ripped off to the tune of millions of dollars each year. A NEW SYSTEM Recent testimony by major promoters and managers in criminal proceedings have established beyond any question that there is a dire need for a completely new free agency system that has checks and balances in the determination and distribution of revenue from all sources. It must be transparent and audited by an accredited national CPA firm with an impeccable reputation for integrity. It will be best if they do not have experience in the fight business and is not connected or beholden to any state boxing commission. The firm should have a thorough understanding of the business aspects of other sports, and a heart for the financial welfare of fighters. This firm must be one that fighters and the public can trust, but that the promoters and television -- the "insiders" -- won't trust. The insiders are the problem. The promoters could not have hijacked the system without the media. Conversely, with the media’s help, primarily television, the public and the fighters have an alternative: self-matchmaking leading to Western and Eastern Champions in each of seven and nine weight classes for MMA and boxing respectively, feeding into the U.S. Boxing Championships, all financed under the auspices of a new fighters' league organized by Fighters Online. This would provide the alternative that professional fighters and the public deserve. MMA and boxing writers would be unanimous and enthusiastic in their support. LESSONS LEARNED: REVISITING THE U.S. BOXING CHAMPIONSHIPS Almost 25 years ago, with the courageous and visionary support of ABC Wide World of Sports, the lofty, sound-in-principal United States Boxing Championships had a short, auspicious beginning. It inspired hope that ABC-TV would structure a model for fair competition and revenue sharing for each boxer in every region of the U.S., competition based solely upon skill and the number of times a boxer was able to win in the process. The time has come for free agency self-matchmaking and ensuring integrity in competition.. But first, a little history so mistakes of the past are not repeated and ABC Wide World of Sports' great concept becomes successful. THE ABORTED U.S. BOXING CHAMPIONSHIPS A Bad Beginning for a Great Idea Over 22 years ago, Sam Toperoff wrote a great article in the August, 1977 issue of Sport. The title was "The complete, inside story of a scandal - DEATH OF THE DON KING TOURNAMENT." The following is from the article. The story began with a quote from Sports Illustrated, January 3, 1977. It will sound familiar. "THE COMPLETE, INSIDE STORY OF A SCANDAL - DEATH OF THE DON KING TOURNAMENT by Sam Toperoff, Sport, August 1977 "The Tournament, says King, will change the face of boxing and remodel an image that has long been unfair. We will show that boxing belongs, says King, that the undesirable elements long associated with it are no more…people don’t know what they’re talking about when they talk of fixes and gangsterism inside boxing. That’s a holdover from years and years ago. What about baseball and basketball and football and horseracing? The scandals in these sports had been outrageous and on a larger scale. Yet they come back bigger than ever. Why? Because of television, of the concerted efforts and promotion behind them." – Sports Illustrated, January 3, 1977. "Boxing had become a major television attraction, and the man the Networks had to see about acquiring rights to top fight promotions was, of course, Don King. Back in July, 1976 – even before the U.S. Olympic boxing team achieved excellent ratings in Montreal – ABC-TV had contracted to pay Don King Productions $1.4 million in purse money and $40,000 per show for production costs to stage a U.S. Boxing Championships Tournament. The ABC contract that King signed stated, "…you acknowledge that the quality of the fighters participating in each weight category be the best possible, determined by rankings established by Ring Magazine at the time the tournament starts." Ring was to be paid $70,000 for its services. James A. Farley, Jr., the chairman of the New York Athletic Commission, agreed to act as unpaid overseer of the King tournament. King then set up a tournament supervisory committee, headed by Farley and including Ring’s editor-publisher Nat Loubet and associate editor John Ort, plus two former members of the New York State Athletic Commission. "A scenario of corruption developed. It ran something like this: ABC had shown a strong interest in the tournament idea almost one year before it began, so King and his cronies had plenty of time to hand pick many of the participants who were all of the Ring rated fighters in eight weight classes. John Ort at Ring could conveniently move connected fighters up in his rankings so they qualified. Since not all ranked fighters, especially among the heavyweights, were interested in joining, and since not all ranked fighters were approached, it was fairly easy to justify the presence of 'tomatoe-can' fighters. "It turned out that ABC had been investigating the tournament from the beginning. On April 16, three months and 27 bouts after the tournament began, ABC announced that it was suspending the U.S. Boxing Championships because: 'ABC has now determined that the records of numerous fighters in the tournaments listed in the 1977 Ring Record Book (which had been published on April 12) are, in fact, inaccurate and contain many fights which apparently never took place…ABC believes that the very basis of the tournament has been severely compromised.' The network had a right to cancel because its contract with King stated, '…you agree to use your best efforts to establish the tournament as one of credibility, merit and quality…' "There was, to the author’s way of thinking, a murky quality in the moral stance at ABC. Its sports officials had bought something that may not have been wholly pure – why else the last minute affidavits? Soon after it suspended the tournament, ABC released the fact that only hours before the first round bouts on January 16, they had King, Ort and Farley sign affidavits attesting that the tournament was legitimate and that the fighters’ ratings were honest. So ABC itself had been suspicious of its show even before it opened. But it was doing very well in the ratings and had a promising future as a yearly national and perhaps even international spectacle. Much of what had been done to 'clean up the act' could also be interpreted as self protection. 'If it’s at all possible,' they said, 'we’d like to do this thing next year. It’s still too good a concept to lose.' (underline supplied) "Many small time fighters and managers who are the fiber and life blood of the sport were deprived of the bouts, purses, and TV exposure they deserved. Ring Magazine’s reputation was destroyed, and commissioner Farley resigned. Another boxing tournament, the 'World Television Championships' which had been seen over many independent outlets, went off the air shortly after King’s tournament was suspended. "The networks were unwilling and clearly unable to regulate the sport. With little sentiment in Congress for a federal commission, boxing’s best hopes for the future reside with the courageous fiercely independent fighters and managers who let it be known that they would not accede to any control by the King organization and never got to fight in the U.S Boxing Championships." END FightersOnline Home GreatFightsOnline Home |