Columnist Dean Juipe: Boxing reformists are falling

Dean Juipe

Friday, June 1, 2001 | 11:31 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.

Hardly a day goes by without news of some governmental agency sticking its nose into professional boxing.

Be it the State of Nevada or the feds in Washington, the sport has been inundated with a continuous wave of (supposed) legislative reform.

The trouble is this: While the tinkering in Nevada targets specific measures that are helpful to administrators with the state's athletic commission, the national acts have proven to be fairly lame and largely ineffective.

For the most part, the D.C. reformists are doing little more than spewing rhetoric on an involved subject they know little about. Personally, I'm tired of Arizona senator John McCain telling us what's wrong with boxing (and sports gambling, for that matter).

Boxing is complicated and largely ungovernable. It is what it is, and that's an extremely popular sport that has a number of inherent weaknesses that can't and won't be altered by any regulatory agency.

Washington should quit trying.

"Boxing's unwieldy at best," said the man with perhaps the greatest insight into the morass, NSAC executive director Marc Ratner.

He says the 1996 Professional Boxing & Safety Act proved to be of some assistance in that it standardized championship rules, but that the "Muhammad Ali" boxing bill of 2000 fell flat in spite of its good ideas.

"It's not clear enough," Ratner said of the Ali bill. "There's not enough in black and white. There are a lot of gray areas that are a real problem for me."

New and as-yet unnamed legislation is on the docket in 2001, although fighters, promoters and fans can expect little to change even with its passage.

What is needed -- particularly with Ratner saying "the status quo is not working" -- is a national body, be it the already established Association of Boxing Commissions, or a new office with similar goals, that can arbitrate disputes and make ironclad decisions.

"The ABC can't continue to be run like a mom-and-pop operation," Ratner said. "It needs expanded funding and it needs some kind of federal backbone to make it work."

The ABC's downfall is its inability to enforce its recommendations.

Comprised of 44 states and some eight Indian commissions, it has its good intentions yet it leaves its compliance to its individual members. Kentucky, for instance, held a boxing card this spring in which former WBA heavyweight champion Greg Page was seriously hurt and treatment on his brain injury was delayed by the lack of a ringside ambulance, which is a stipulation the ABC advocates but can't enforce. While such rules may be a financial burden for smaller shows, as Ratner says, "Maybe Kentucky shouldn't be having boxing if it can't afford to have an ambulance."

He'd like to see a properly funded national commission made up of fighters, promoters, regulators and TV executives in which binding arbitration will resolve any and all disputes.

But, in an indication of how little hope there is for truly meaningful reform, he also said he would settle for standardized medical tests within the industry.

I'd settle for not seeing McCain's pompous dissertations on anything to do with sports.