Dont you feel that with just 3 minutes the round ends right when it was finally heating up many times?
Yes, although often for reasons that would make the same thing happen at the end of a 4-minute round. And I agree that an odd number of rounds would probably be better than the even number we have now in order to prevent draws.
However, if we start fucking around with the rules of the sport now, we might kill it off. Boxing has things like history, tradition and provenance that help legitimise it and make it something bigger than just two guys fighting each other. If it's simply
fighting that people want to see, they'll just watch MMA anyway. At this point, boxing can't compete with MMA when it comes to fighting alone. If the sport was introduced today, most people would just laugh it off. "Yeah, that new thing, it's like MMA, but they are only allowed to punch and can only fight standing up, and they have to wear these oversized padded mittens on their hands, it's looks so weird and stoopid, bro. And haha, if one of them is knocked down he gets 10 seconds to get up or he loses. It's soooo fucking ridiculous!§!"§" Boxing survives because it's been here, largely in unchanged form, for much longer than the vast majority of fans have been alive.
I remember a few years ago FIFA started debating whether to make the goals in soccer a little larger so that you'd get more goals scored, making the sport more exciting to watch and avoiding draws etc. At first I thought that sounded like a good idea - like, hey, I might start watching soccer now, but then as I spent more time thinking about it, I realised it probably wasn't such a great idea after all. And they ended up voting against it. You have to be very careful fucking around with a sport and its rules too much. And the guys at FIFA got that. And while I think soccer would have probably survived the change, I'm not convinced boxing is robust enough at this point to survive something like that.
And as a fan (and former amateur boxer), I'm happy with the sport not being perfect. It's probably better to just keep it like it is than try to improve it a this point. Its imperfections aren't necessarily all bad either. Controversies like the Fury-Wilder decision do make this sport deeply unsatisfying at times, but that can also be a good thing. These controversies do after all fuel discussions and make people even more passionate. They also help sell rematches. Controversy also adds to the complexity of a sport that is already made interesting and attractive in part it's absolutely ridiculously complex.
And as someone living in time where the world seems to be changing at an accelerating rate, I'm growing increasingly fond the things that don't. I find that I've really started to appreciate
old stuff and
traditions lately. Whether it's old architecture, Swiss watches, whisky or boxing, part of what I like about those things is that they actually have some history and some real fucking
roots. I hink we need things like that in a world where things are now either constantly morphing into something else or being made obsolete and replaced by the new.
While some would argue that in order for boxing to survive, like all things, it needs to change, I think perhaps the best thing we can do for boxing right now is to
not change it. Just let boxing be boxing. MMA may sell more PPVs every year, but a UFC heavyweight title won't have that feel of
royalty that a boxing heavyweight title has for a very long time - if ever. Boxing should remain firm on what it is how it does things, and that's how it will keep commanding respect from the world for a long time yet. If people complain about its ways, it should just reply with a simple "Fuck you, I'm Boxing."
