Boxing Viewpoint: “What the Heck” Is Going On?

ByJim Marra

What some of you may not have known is that a heavyweight title fight took place Saturday night in Germany. Russian Nikolai Valuev put his WBA strap on the line against a very undeserving challeneger in Owen “What the Heck” Beck. The Jamacian Beck was coming off losing his last two out of three fights. The two losses being a TKO stoppage courtesy of Monte Barrett and split decision loss to Ray Austin. His only win in his last three fights was against a sub par Darnell Wilson and that was a eight round decision.

As am I sure sure you do not need to be reminded that this is not boxing’s heavyweight golden age.

Back in the 1970’s the great Muhammad Ali, after losing in a heavyweight title fight on March 8, 1971 to “Smokin” Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden, had to fight Jimmy Ellis, Buster Mathis, Jurgen Blin, Mac Foster, George Chuvalo, Jerry Quarry, Alvin Lewis, Floyd Patterson, Bob Foster, Joe Bunger, Ken Norton twice, Rudi Lubbers, and a rematch with Joe Frazier, all in that order just to a another shot at the heavyweight title against the then champ George Foreman and we all know what happened in Zaire in 1974.

A part of me is saying, well, it is only the WBA strap that was on the line and the two heavyweights that were fighting this weekend in Germany were not fighting for the linear form of the title.

But the other side of me says, having four recognized titles is bad enough for the sport and then to have the champ of one of these titles fight such a underserving challenger is a mockery to the sport. To take this argument one step futher – why even have this title at all if these are the type of defenses that are going to be made?

In any case, Nikolai Valuev won his first defense of the WBA belt by stopping Beck via third round TKO and improved to 44-0, 33 KO’s. But besides improving his record, this win does nothing to improve the heavyweight division.

And Valuev isn’t the only one at fault here: There looks to be two less than steller heavyweight match ups this summer, the first one being WBO Champion Sergei Lyakhovich, who make his first defense against Kevin McBride, another title fight that has no effect on the heavyweight division.

And then we have the unnecessary rematch between WBC champ Hasim Rahman and the challenger Oleg Maskaev on August 12, which HBO has the audacity to put on Pay Per View (I can’t wait to see the buy numbers for this fight).

It seems as if the boxing promoters are trying to make the heavyweight division extinct by putting on these meaningless fights that nobody wants to watch, well besides the direct family members and friends of the fighters in these lack luster bouts.

After Valuev’s victory on Saturday night, he remarked “Now I will go to conquer America.”

First he has to conquer the casual boxing fan if he wants anybody to start or continue to watch his fights. And with a rematch against John Ruiz on the horizon I don’t see that happening anytime soon.