Ahhh… the great sport of boxing has become a parody. Before I tell you why I think that, let’s go over the history of prize fighting.

Boxing used to be a sport that was introduced by the Greeks. Before the mid-third century B.C., the ancient Greek Olympics were called the Hekatomboia. This festival involved the sacrifice of 100 oxen and attracted participants from all over Greece. The ancient Olympics were so successful that the Greeks created the Panhellenic Games, which were four games in four different city-states to honor different gods. The Olympics lasted nearly 1,000 years until they were outlawed in 393 CE by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I. However, they were revived again in 1896.

Boxing, or something similar, was represented in those games as people that had their hands wrapped in cloth fought… that was part of the games. As legend has it, Mikus Tysonious was the first ever champion, yeah that would have been pretty funny but the actual name of the person was Onomastus, which in Greek means famous, which I’m guessing was his fight name, a lot like the “Gypsy King”, because I can’t imagine that someone would just name their kid Famous. But it was Greece, so who the hell knows. Hey, did you see what Famous did, he wrote graffiti on the Temple of Hera. That Famous… always getting into trouble.

Boxing resurfaced in England in the early 16th century in the form of bare-knuckle boxing, sometimes referred to as prizefighting. Boxing was introduced in the United States in the late 1700s but began to take root there only about 1800. Irish immigrants are said to have introduced boxing to the United States as they migrated to the Northeast throughout the 1860s and 1870s with the first Heavyweight Champion being John L. Sullivan, the son of Irish immigrants, who was said later in life to become friends with an Irish guy named Bailey…. and he used his cream to get in shape for his fights. Bailey’s Irish Cream would eventually be the downfall of the Champion.

As the years went on we seen great champions come and go. Boxing was such an adored sport that one of the famous figures in history, Muhammad Ali, is world renowned. To be the heavyweight champion of the world brought a certain amount of prestige… most of the time. Now, boxing is losing its panache. With social media and everyone having a camera ready to shoot someone at their worst, these famous fighters are confronting things their predecessors didn’t have to. But the worst part of the situation is how technology can affect your performance. Boxing is no longer a sport that is determined on skill but on who has less baggage or is more liked by the “power company”. That electricity and wave particle duality or particle wave physics has more of an outcome to determine who wins a fight than the fighters themselves makes boxing a joke.

The fighters are aware of this and they constantly try to make their opponent into some kind of Bond villain in the hopes of not being affected by these outside entities. They would rather see their opponent be affected. It’s a sad state of affairs when sports is no longer sports but people trying to please an unknown master. I still watch boxing but only to see which of the two opponents is going to be affected. Being the best is no longer necessary, now you have to win popularity contests.

Thank God it wasn’t that way… at least not as much… in the days of Ali.