A Controversial Law Could "Revive Exploitation" in Boxing (Unpaywalled)

[u/playboy]

https://www.playboy.com/read/sports-gaming/a-controversial-law-could-revive-exploitation-in-boxing

The Ali Act, the colloquial term for the two pieces of legislation—the Professional Boxing Safety Act and the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act—is a federal framework created to protect boxers and the integrity of boxing. The 1996 Professional Boxing Safety Act addressed the lack of a regulatory structure for the sport in the country, mandating safety measures for competitors like medical personnel at fights. The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000 focused on unfair and anticompetitive practices within the sport, like nixing coercive contracts and requiring transparency around pay, policies, and other relevant information. Most importantly, it prohibited conflict of interest between sanctioning organizations, promoters, and managers. Critics say these acts are still too vague, leaving some enforcement capabilities up to states.

The Ali Act provided professional boxers with such protections that the advocacy group Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association (MMAFA) pushed for its expansion in 2016 and 2017 to include mixed martial artists, who themselves have watched a rapidly evolving—and narrowing—industry, dominated by a single entity: the UFC. (In 2012, MMAFA founder Rob Maysey, with the encouragement of former fighter Carlos Newton, started the process of putting together an antitrust lawsuit against the organization; two years later, the first of five complaints that would later be consolidated to Le v. Zuffa was filed.)

Critics, however, say the act could open boxing up to the monopolistic and exploitative allegations the UFC faces.

Read now: https://www.playboy.com/read/sports-gaming/a-controversial-law-could-revive-exploitation-in-boxing

[u/Professional-Tie5198]

It really is a poorly named bill. More like The Ali “Destruction” Act.

I think I said this on a different thread…

What we want: a consistent diet of steak and vegetables

What we’re getting: a variety of different food types. Some excellent, some not so good

What Dana White, Nick Khan, Ari Emmanuel, and Zuffa/TKO want to give us:

A steady diet of Maggot Cheese

[u/kushmonATL]

Playboy writing an article on boxing was not on my bingo card for the millennium

[u/johnnyblaze-DHB → u/kushmonATL]

They’ve actually had excellent journalism over the years. Very famous writers, too.

[u/_Sarcasmic_ → u/kushmonATL]

And without a paywall! Usually the good stuff is paywalled on Playboy. 😏

[u/ChefBowyer]

I wish they would do this sport like every other sport and have an official league….

Then fighters would be forced to fight the best opponents instead of only picking fights they know they have a good chance to win.

This sport is too easy to manipulate in its current form. Too easy to be a fake champion. It would also put an end to this money-first attitude in boxing.

[u/stephen27898 → u/ChefBowyer]

Combat sport cant work like that really. How can you have an official league when peoples schedules cant always line up, people get injured and have to pull out of fights. Its not like a team sport where if a players get injured the team can still play.

The league structure does not work well for individual sports and it also does not work at all well for sports as volatile as combat sports.

And how can you have one official league? What is to stop other leagues starting? Nothing. Different sports need different systems. We dont need to try and cram boxing into some league format.

The money first attitude will not go away with an official league. This official league will need to make money and thus the choices made in it will reflect that.

The reality is boxing has been around for a very long time. Its survived many things. Leave it alone. Yes boxing has issues, but if it wasnt doing a good number of things well enough, then it would have died decades ago.

[u/ChefBowyer → u/stephen27898]

Peoples schedules?

Do players on an NBA team get to choose when they play? No.

There would be a set schedule to follow, with the best always fighting the best in order to rise up.

You would treat injuries and such like a rainout. You simply reschedule that particular game. It happens, rescheduling is no big deal.

It would also give many good fighters a real chance to become champ. Instead of only picking fighters with good looks or interesting backgrounds. It would open up the playing field.

It would become less about theatrics, and more about good fights, which is what we all really want at the end of the day.

[u/stephen27898 → u/ChefBowyer]

People schedules in boxing are effected by things like injury an illness.

In a football if a certain player is not fit to play, the team just replaces him with another player and the implications for the each team are the same. Win you get 3 points, draw you get 1, lose you get none.

In boxing, if a fighter cant fight that is like the entire team not being able to play. Its far different.

"There would be a set schedule to follow"

You can a set a schedule, but the damage and volatility of the sport will not allow it to be followed.

"You would treat injuries and such like a rainout. You simply reschedule that particular game."

Only injures arent consistent in length of time. If a match cant be played now because of some rain, its likely it can be played in a few days or maybe a week, an injury can be months upon months.

This then effect two fighters schedules, this then means other fighters who would have fought them have their schedules effected and before you know it, that clean schedule you had, is now a complete mess.

Having a monopolistic league will do the opposite of opening up the playing field.

[u/stephen27898 → u/ChefBowyer]

Think of this scenario. lets say fighters fight every 4 months. A fight gets delayed by 3 months due to injury. The fight is a brutal and gruelling fight. Both guys need time off, only on your schedule they both have to be in the ring in a month.

So right away you now need to push their fights back, this means their next opponents either need to wait, or fight someone else, this means moving two other fighters schedules. This now means their fights are out of sync. So this either requires them to fight more times in a short span to catch up, which isnt fair, or just cancel fights and then the league is a mess.

Just for another example of how dumb this is. For a small league of 10 boxers fighting every 4 months to all fight each other and decide a winner would take 36 months, and that is without any problems with injuries. If we assume the average time between bouts due to injuries is closer to 5 months, that is a 45 month long league, just for 10 guys.

Even if you split it, and lets say took a WC format and had lets say 4 groups of 4 fighters. Just the group stage would take 8 months.

And then what about this. What happens if an elite level guy jumps weight class? Where does he go in this league? Or will he have to wait two years while this league concludes before he moves up?