Columnist Dean Juipe: Uncle Sam wants say in boxing

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 11:03 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Boxing reform, as mandated by the United States Congress, is like a train that's just chugging along, sometimes picking up speed and sometimes slowing to a crawl.

When charting its progress, it can appear as if it's stationary, as in idled or maybe even sidetracked.

At the very least, it's on a slow and tedious passage. And if the bill that's being studied at the Senate committee level ever reaches its destination, the calendar will read 2000 or maybe even 2001.

Co-sponsored by Nevada democratic Senator Richard Bryan, the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 1999 is virtually identical to the failed Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 1998. Last year's effort stalled and didn't make it through the Senate committee process, and was never introduced in the House of Representatives.

Bryan and Arizona colleague John McCain reintroduced the measure this year and the bill's pluses and minuses are being debated in the Senate Commerce Committee.

Bryan administrative assistant David Lemmon said Monday that if the bill passes a full vote of the Senate, "the House will have it in their laps for at least a year."

In other words, don't expect the sport to undergo any radical changes for quite some time.

Actually, the Ali bill isn't all that radical. Its greatest concentration seems to be on loosening the relationships between promoters and fighters, allowing the latter more flexibility. Nevada's other senator, Harry Reid, has recommended a few minor changes in the bill's wording and intent, as he believes it is cable networks like Showtime and HBO that have too much power.

He also thinks the Ali bill has too great an emphasis on the sport's financial workings and not enough on the physical well-being of its participants.

"Some will quibble over some of the wordings, but that's to be expected," Lemmon said from Washington D.C. "But I think we all agree that even if you're not a fight fan, you can look and see that boxing's in a mess."

Everyone does agree on that, including one of the sport's principal wheelers and dealers, promoter Bob Arum.

"Gradually we've let the sport erode," he said. "And this year we've returned to the way things were in 1965: There won't be one fight on network TV."

But does that, or even last month's outrageous scoring in the Evander Holyfield vs. Lennox Lewis draw, mean that government should play an active role in legislating the sport? For all of its foibles, does boxing need Uncle Sam?

Bryan feels it does, saying "because of unscrupulous business practices of promoters and managers, the sport is losing credibility like never before."

He's concerned because boxing is big business in Nevada.

But, you know what? It always will be, whether his Ali bill ever sees the light of day or not.

And therein lies the difficulty in really embracing governmental intervention in the sport. Maybe the Ali bill has its meaningful moments and would be for the sport's overall good, yet it's difficult to ever picture boxing in anything but a survivalist mode.

It merely chameleons along, going from one shade of despair to another. Even in its brightest moments, it's bleak, and it's never in the midst of a lasting renaissance.

It's hard to believe the U.S. Congress can ever do anything constructive about that.