Boxing’s leadership and phony organizations remain as pointless as ever.
The WBO, which gave Timothy Bradley a shot at Manny Pacquiao’s welterweight champion belt on June 9 in Las Vegas, conducted a review of the controversial decision.
All five WBO judges who reviewed the fight scored it in favor of Pacquiao. In fact, Pac Man won 9 rounds to 3 on average based on these judges’ cards.
Their scores were: 118-110, 117-111, 117-111, 116-112 and 115-113.
The good news is it remains pretty unanimous that Pacquiao won the fight. The bad news is the WBO validated the robbery, yet won’t do anything about it.
What’s the point of conducting a review if you won’t do the right thing and overturn the decision? Why not invalidate Bradley’s belt and give it back to Pacquiao? Oh, because boxing organizations are meaningless and work in cahoots with promoters? Because promoters like Bob Arum have been reviewed in the past for bribing these organizations? Oh, okay, now I get it.
To make matters worse, Pacquiao is now saying he wants a rematch with Bradley to win his belt back legitimately. Again, this is all following Bob Arum’s script and avoiding what the public wants: a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. finally.
The bottom line is boxing needs a massive overhaul that should begin with federal regulation and a commissioner. This is something I aspired to do when I was in college, and a movement in the senate has actually begun toward that goal.
