Opinion Piece by Donn K. Harris, Contributing Writer
TO: His Excellency Turki Al-Alshaikh
Chairman, General Entertainment Authority
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Your Excellency:
I know I speak for many prize-fighting fans around the world when I offer my deepest thanks for the commitment the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia has made to the sport of boxing in recent years. As the Kingdom’s representative, you have made friends worldwide with the quality of your ideas, the consistency of your investment, your visible passion for the sport and the high standards you achieve at each event. You have helped to transform the sport. I believe you are aware that the work is not done.
We are poised to take boxing to new levels of excellence and wish to honor your nation’s investment by doing our part. I am a lifelong boxing fan, a freelance writer and a former educator. In the latter role, I became a student of leadership practice, and that is a relevant topic today for boxing as we pass the 5-year anniversary of the Anthony Joshua – Andy Ruiz Jr. rematch (December 7, 2019, Diriyah), which many point to as a watershed event in establishing Saudi Arabia as a premier boxing location.
It is not difficult to observe that boxing, as a business, is chaotic and lacks structure. The sanctioning bodies, the promoters, the regional commissions, the venues, the trainers, the boxing gyms, the television and pay-per-view executives – groups of people forced to battle each other to stay afloat. This is an unregulated environment where rules, standards, incentives and even world titles are inconsistently applied. Promoters bicker and boycott each other. The fighters avoid tough opponents because a single loss can derail a career – last spring Devin Haney was defeated by an over-the-weight and supplement-enhanced Ryan Garcia; even with a No Contest ruling and Garcia suspended for a year, Haney went from top-five pound-for-pound candidate to a virtual free fall off boxing’s elite lists.
As an investment, boxing is a risky proposition. Even your focused strategies and inspired vision for the sport may not overcome the flaws that have existed for decades. A new approach is needed.
Boxing needs a Commissioner endowed with decision-making authority who can hold all parties to a high standard and render discipline and sanctions when necessary. Here are specific actions a Commissioner could have taken in recent times that would have saved the sport from itself:
- consolidate the four sanctioning bodies into three or even two, leaving Ring Magazine in charge of the lineal belt. Doing this will hopefully avoid the situations like William Scull becoming Canelo Alvarez’s mandatory – a situation that weakens the sport and is a set-up for fighters to rebel. Four separate bodies are not needed to evaluate and recognize fighters.
- restore the prestige of the belt system by enforcing mandatory fights between champions and true, viable challengers, with belt forfeiture if guidelines are ignored. Canelo should have been stripped, one belt at a time, for avoiding Benavidez, Morell, and Christian Mbili. Bud Crawford avoided Boots Ennis, for now at least, by moving to a higher weight class. Marvin Hagler didn’t go anywhere when John Mugabe was his mandatory; Floyd Patterson put his head on the chopping block when Sonny Liston’s turn came, as did Joe Frazier when George Foreman bludgeoned his way to the Kingston, Jamaica fight and nearly decapitated the proud champion. Crawford should not hold any welterweight belts. Tournament protocols need to be developed so new champions can be established when former champions vacate.
- stop the elevation of unworthy fighters to dubious championship belts. The Commissioner would have stopped the award of Rolly Romero’s empty championship belt in 2022. Romero is a vulgar loudmouth with a mediocre resumé whose notoriety is more from X-rated on-camera rants than his boxing skill. This was proven when he received a gift stoppage and then lost outright in his first two defenses. Mahmoud “Manuel” Charr was listed as a heavyweight champ for years as he recovered from gunshot wounds and bad hips hiding out from gangsters in a German industrial town – a clumsy, unskilled fighter unworthy of a heavyweight championship. Journeyman Trevor Bryant also held a belt, as did Robert Helenius and a young Daniel DuBois when the man who beat him, Joe Joyce, could not even get a title shot. Someone needs to make sense out of the interim, in-recess, super, regular, gold, silver, and other belts that have been conjured. There needs to be a regular system of awarding belts and title fights.
- rematch clauses should go before a committee who will examine the ramifications of sanctioning bodies stripping titles and will look at contenders worthy of a title fight who would be disadvantaged by two names having a monopoly on opportunity for up to a year-and-a-half. The committee will have the authority to put conditions on the clauses and even to veto them.
- develop an ongoing professional education Academy to hold referees and particularly judges to a consistent professional standard. Judging has long been an ugly scar on the sport. Referees, often an excellent part of the team in a very difficult role, seem to lose it overnight: Kenny Bayless let Caleb Plant hang on to David Benavidez for four rounds without deducting a point or even giving a warning; Tony Weeks stopped the Romero-Barosso fight with Barosso leading and fighting back against a sloppy onslaught from Romero; Harvey Dock’s performance in the Haney-Garcia fight was inexplicable: Haney grabbed at Ryan for the entire 7th round, with no points taken from Haney, with only one knockdown called when it could have been three. A point was taken from Garcia who in his frustration slapped at Haney on a break – a 10-6 Garcia round was scored 9-8 on all three cards. One judge even had the bout a draw because of that 3-minute interval of incompetence from Harvey Dock.
- be the voice who explains PED violations and rules to the public. Deny future contracts to any laboratory that gives results to their favorite reporter before an official release. Give clear timelines, explain the PED, be specific about the punishment, clarify intentional vs accidental. Lisa Garcia was correct to question why her son’s blood test was leaked before an official announcement was made. This allowed all sorts of mayhem to take place. Boxing is not immune to privacy laws. The reporter publicizing this information is cheating just like the athlete taking the substance is cheating, and the moralizing and judgment condemning the athlete is the height of hypocrisy.
- limit the involvement of unsavory types who claim to be boxing nutrition and supplement advisors. Your Excellency, your country bans most of the supplements.
- a Commissioner could have denied Deontay Wilder a third fight with Tyson Fury for the Bronze Bomber’s outrageous accusations against Tyson Fury following their second fight. Fury could have sued Wilder for defamation and refused to fight him on economic grounds. The man hurt Fury – and the sport’s – economic base by the accusations, and more of Wilder’s deranged rants would have further hurt the sport. Other sports issue major fines for public airing of complaints about officiating, and this was beyond that. The courts never would have gotten involved if boxing had its own internal systems. Fury would have been within his rights if he had refused to fight Wilder for conduct by an opponent detrimental to the best interests of the champion. The loser did not acknowledge the victory; why offer him a rematch?
- mandated cultural awareness education for fighters performing in different countries. Your Excellency, as an American born in Brooklyn, New York I would like to apologize for the behavior and language of Brooklynite Big Baby Miller at the press conference for the Day of Reckoning in December 2023. His loud vulgarity and ignorance of Saudi culture distressed me. He never should have been there. He does not represent America. Miller is not even that good or exciting a fighter. He cussed and threatened and insulted his way on to the big stage. Before the scheduled 2019 bout with Anthony Joshua, Miller was removed for the most blatant steroid violations in the history of the sport. Along with endangering Mr. Joshua, he was insulting and lewd toward the champion’s mother. Given another opportunity in December 2023, Miller was again an embarrassment. We need to bring better representatives to your country.
- and finally, get a mentor for Ryan Garcia and set up a program to serve others like him. We have always had a volatile mix of the deeply troubled and the spiritually developed in this purest and most demanding of all sports, sometimes in the same person (Mike Tyson, George Foreman come to mind). Ryan Garcia is uniquely gifted and uniquely off-kilter; he could imbalance the entire boxing universe. For mentors, we have Andre Ward, Timothy Bradley, Roy Jones Jr., Sean Porter, Miguel Cotto, Abner Mares, Carl Froch, Austin Trout, Teddy Atlas, Abel Sanchez, Manny Pacquiao, Nonito Donaire, the Klitschko Brothers – solid men, evolved men, not without flaws but men who have been through it and kept their heads and came out the other end with their wits and souls intact. They could be the springboards for a new generation of introspective fighters who learn how to handle their demons.
These grave issues are primarily a function of a lack of centralized leadership. A new CEO will spur large changes. Folks retire, unwilling to accommodate the new leader’s expectations. Secondary levels of leadership bring new people into the mix. Adversaries learn to work together, as we’ve already seen with Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren. They cringe in one another’s presence, but they play nice.
Your Excellency, I must say again that this dialogue would not even exist without your investment and partnership with the many entities that make up today’s boxing landscape. It is in all our interest to see your investment remain lucrative, and that the purity of your vision is not corrupted or allowed to erode because no one stepped up and demanded the level of excellence you produce on a regular basis.
I will make the first nomination for Commissioner: the current Commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, Mr. Larry Hazzard, Sr. He has the persuasive skills to bring people together and is a first-rate administrator. Mr. Hazzard may be nearing retirement age, but if he could be enticed to cap his illustrious career by giving 2 years as our first Commissioner, he could mentor his successor. On the women’s side, Clarissa Shields will be an outstanding leader when her fighting days are complete. She’s present, engaged, articulate and fiery. Laila Ali would be a credit to the Commissioner’s Office.
To place this in a context, the answers to these two questions should tell us all we need to know:
- If we showed this business model to 100 successful business and entrepreneurial minds in today’s global economy, would the model receive even a single endorsement?
- If we were starting an enterprise like this from scratch, and held a competition for teams to create a business model, would we spend more than a few minutes on a model that looks like the current one before discarding it as too wasteful and adversarial?
With that, I thank you for indulging me in this 2000-word analysis and proposal, and if this begins a conversation that tackles these issues in a new and innovative way not mentioned here, I would be thrilled to see Saudi Arabia’s commitment and the global history of the sport honored by the best minds getting together and figuring this out. To my mind, however, all roads lead to a Commissioner.
With the greatest respect,
Donn K. Harris
former Chairperson, California Arts Council, former Director of Creativity, San Francisco Unified Schools
