By John Scheinman
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, February 21, 2008
 
Dating back to John L. Sullivan's defeat of Joe Collins in 1882, Madison Square Garden has hosted 22 fights for the world heavyweight boxing championship, and every one of those matches featured at least one American. That string will be broken Saturday night when Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov step into the Garden ring to unify the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organization heavyweight titles.
 
Nothing could paint a starker portrait of the decline of U.S. heavyweight boxing than a Ukrainian squaring off against a Russian in New York City for a title once emblematic of American dominance of world boxing. From Sullivan, the "Boston Strongboy," the lineage of majestic heavyweight U.S. champions continued through Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield.
 
A look at the heavyweight rankings today shows how much has changed. The leading names are Klitschko, Ibragimov, Ruslan Chagaev, Nicolay Valuev, Alexander Povetkin, Alexander Dimitrenko and Serguei Liakhovich. World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev, born in Russia, gained U.S. citizenship two years ago, but his skills were honed long ago in the former Soviet Union.
 
The lone bright prospect from the United States in the division may be Tony Thompson of Fort Washington, and he's 36. The rest are mostly aged and recycled, such as Hasim Rahman and John Ruiz, who trudge on with careers long after their stardom has faded. Clearly, the bottom has fallen out of American heavyweight boxing.
 
"The fighters are coming out of Russia, Germany, and you've got Latinos," said Hall of Fame trainer Lou Duva, 85, who helped develop 19 world champions including Holyfield. ". . . What have you got? You've got Oscar De La Hoya and you've got Oscar De La Hoya. I mean, what have you got?"
 
The demise of the great American heavyweight has multiple origins, according to many deeply involved in the sport. The lack of free television exposure for boxing in recent years and the attraction of young athletes to big-salary sports such as football and basketball have hurt. The one-two punch of a dysfunctional amateur system and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, however, likely rank higher.
 
"The U.S. amateur program in the past 10 or 12 years is totally gone," said Emmanuel Steward, a leading American trainer, who works with Klitschko. "That's why you're seeing old guys like [Shane] Mosley and De La Hoya hanging on. There aren't any younger fighters coming up."
 
U.S. amateur boxing used to produce one superstar after another. The pinnacle came in 1976 with the U.S. "Gold Rush" team that featured Sugar Ray Leonard, Michael and Leon Spinks, Howard Davis and Leo Randolph. When the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics, the United States, with a remarkably gifted group of fighters, won nine gold medals.
 
"Every Games went down from there," said Michael King, former president of King World Productions, who made a fortune syndicating television shows such as "Wheel of Fortune" and invested heavily several years ago in an attempt to revive U.S. amateur boxing. "I don't think it takes a real expert to look at the sport and say it's hanging on by its fingernails. It's because the farm system is choking to death. It's been death by a thousand cuts: lack of resources, organization, funding."
 
In fall 2005, King raised $60 million to try to infuse life into the faltering U.S. amateur boxing program, promising powerful marketing muscle and to rebuild gyms and Boys and Girls clubs in troubled neighborhoods that are the backbone of the amateur sport. In 2003, he signed a 21-year contract with USA Boxing, the national governing body of amateur boxing in the country, and gave the organization more than a million dollars a year. In December 2006, he canceled the contract.
 
"I gave these people $4 million and I never got one thing except yelled at," King said.
 
"He had no desire to run USA Boxing, but some board members were suspicious they would lose control of the organization," said Robert Voy, USA Boxing president from 2000 to 2004. "They gave him a very difficult time trying to start a marketing program, and there's probably not a better marketing person in the country. It was very short-sighted on the part of the organization."
 
Until recently, nearly every major decision made by USA Boxing had to be voted on by a large board of directors with input from representatives of the 56 member commissions around the country. Decentralization, inefficiency and a lack of money severely damaged the program. Whereas Olympic sports such as swimming and gymnastics have the powerful backing of the NCAA, amateur boxing has relied largely on volunteers.
 
The U.S. Olympic boxing team hasn't won more than one gold medal in a single Games since 1988; De La Hoya, in 1992, was the last bona fide star to emerge from the team.
 
In the meantime, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics opened the doors to the West for boxers who fought for years as government-supported amateurs in highly structured programs. Suddenly, Russians and Ukrainians not only could turn professional but travel to the United States to gain experience from top trainers such as Steward.
 
"When it collapsed, a lot of athletes went into professional sports -- hockey, boxing and other sports," said Klitschko, 31, who won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. "If you consider Cuban boxing, if it was allowed, we'd have professional divisions filled with Cubans.
 
"The amateur program in the United States is weak. It has to be more supported. I've been to Golden Gloves here in New York , and I think it's great such tournaments are running, and boys and girls can box and improve themselves, but I wish the amateur program was more supported by the government in the United States ."
 
In an effort to turn around the program, USA Boxing recently hired as chief executive Jim Millman, founder of Millsport, a leading sports marketing and sponsorship company.
 
Under Millman, USA Boxing has rewritten bylaws to centralize the decision-making process, gained greater financial commitment from the U.S. Olympic Committee and started a program called "Gloves Not Guns." The purpose of the new program -- which is already up and running in Chicago -- is to reintroduce boxing to inner cities, with the help of parks departments and Police Athletic Leagues. It is scheduled to roll out in 20 cities, including Washington.
 
USA Boxing, however, appears woefully short on cash. Its net assets on its 2006 tax returns were $745,503.
 
"The key issue from our organization's perspective is the lack of effective marketing over the past 10 years or so," Millman said. "As we speak, we are just at the beginning stage of a very exciting turnaround . . . to get us back to the glory days of Cassius Clay, Foreman, Holyfield and the like. We've been losing the big high school athlete to football and basketball. Part of our marketing mission is to show our young people the sport is in a comeback mode, so we can get some of the bigger kids as an alternative to those activities."
 
The Olympic Games in Beijing begin in August, and the USOC this year began a full-time resident program for the boxing team in Colorado Springs. Members from the team will participate in a dual meet this weekend in Russia.
 
In the meantime, Klitschko will battle Ibragimov in New York with few young American heavyweight challengers on the horizon.
 
Duva said he wouldn't attend the fight and was debating whether to plunk down $50 to watch the pay-per-view telecast with friends.
 
"There are two Russians fighting for the heavyweight championship at Madison Square Garden, the Mecca of boxing," Duva said. "Who would ever have thought that?"

To begin with a very nice article,I enjoyed reading it.Secondly I
would like to comment on why I follow boxing very little these days
although once-upon-a-time I was a devoted fan.
It boils down to 2 things.
1) Too many boxing organizations
It used to be only the WBC & the WBA that people paid any attention
to.
2) (and more importantly) The Pay-Per-View fights.I don't believe
I will ever be in a position to be happy about shelling out $50
for any prize fight I watch on t.v.
 
A good fighter is a good fighter no matter what is nationality is.
Sure I will usually root for an american fighter (all things being
equal)but I can just as easily root for someone like Lennox Lewis,
or any boxer who gives it their all.I think of one of the t.v. networks
(and gee there are soooo many of those u would think one would try)
would create a regular weekly boxing show shown every week from the
same venue, and feature return bouts with the same local favorites
(often when I do watch boxing I see a good fighter whom I never again
see)than some kind of fan base might develop.Last I knew both U.S.A.
and E.S.P.N. had boxing on a regular basis but they change venue each
time.
As for past glory in the Olympics I hit it luckly.The only time
in my life I was sick in bed for several weeks just happened to be
when the Leon & Michael Spinks,Sugar Ray Lennold,etc... were fighting
for their medals.I believe I got to see all the boxing matches that
Olympics.It was, to say the least,a nice time to be stuck in bed.:)
Diggy