Its hard to keep fighters from holding because when you throw and land or miss and find yourself in a vulnerable position, your first instinct is to lock the person up to make sure youre not caught with something that lays you out. But once you do that .. then what.

It becomes a problem that the honor system doesnt work anymore. Noone lets go because they dont trust the other guy to break clean. I think the sport can do without the rabbit punches to the back of the head or the kidney shots that follow.

If the holding isnt policed, sooner or later the issue starts to weigh in with the fighters. While its not within the rules of the sport, its always nice to see a "serial clincher" hurled to the mat by an opponent.

Perhaps a count system needs to be instituted. When 2 boxers clinch, they have 3 seconds to break clean (ref counts), if a fighter is percieved as not making the effort to break while the other one is... he is warned and the fighters are separated. Subsequently whichever fighter is viewed as the non breaker for the round, loses a point at the end of a round.