The Ring is Counted Out: Boxing’s duplicity devours an honest magazine

Former Ring columnist Ivan Goldman writes in CJR about the downfall of the magazine since the purchase by Golden Boy Productions:

http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_ring_is_counted_out.php?page=all

 

I guess heaven needed to know whom the 5th-ranked cruiserweight in the WBO was.

 

Sad news if for no other reason than the Ring championships were, for many years, the only ones in the sport with any integrity.

 

Re: The Ring is Counted Out: Boxing’s duplicity devours an honest magazine

For those who just want to get to the actual point of the story, I recommend skipping ahead to the paragraph which starts "Golden Boy, one of the biggest."

This quote jumped out at me: “It was a bad marriage from the start,” Collins said after the carnage. “Based on my experience, I have very serious doubts that a partnership between a legitimate journalistic enterprise and a promotional company could ever work.”

Every time Goldman said he wasn't bitter, he seemed more bitter. Every time he cited another example of conflict of interest, it seemed like nothing very different than what CBSSports.com and ESPN.com and FoxSports.com deal with on a daily basis.

The industry has changed, and it makes sense that The Ring has to change with it. Newspaper owners sell out investigative journalists seemingly daily. Why should boxing writers be protected from this bullshit?

It sucks. Everyone knows it. Everyone thinks it. And when it hits hardest, when it comes too close to home, when it robs you of your home, those thoughts can prove poisonous. We work in a soul-crushing business at times.

Goldman must have been completely unaware of his surroundings if he was even slightly caught off guard by all this — starting with Golden Boy Promotions' purchase of The Ring. That he rambled on about his personal experiences for 1,200 words before getting to any point about the industry or the magazine made this piece feel all the more selfish.

I think about Stock Car Racing and some of the other niche sports magazines that have gone out of business, and The Ring at least still exists and seems as though it will for a while. Shadow of its former self? Sure. But what publication isn't these days?

 

Really sad to see what's happening to The Ring. But not their first brush with the dark side of boxing. Remember ABC's U.S. Boxing Championships? (and do click the link to Howard Cossell losing his rug):

http://theboxingtribune.com/2011/03/revisiting-the-ring-magazine-scandal/

 

I never heard of that. Thanks for posting.

 

I haven't seen a copy of The Ring in years but I have boxes filled with back issues from the Bert Randolph Sugar days, when it was a great magazine to read. Was always on the lookout in collectibles' stores and flea markets for old issues of the mag from the 30s, 40s and 50s which are fascinating reads.

Like a lot of niche mags, the internet killed it long before De la Hoya got his hands on it. You didn't need to wait until you got the magazine to find out who won some bantamweight title fight in Japan or what fights were coming up.

 

Cosell discussed the ABC boxing series in his book "I Never Played the Game."

 

As one of the few boxing fans around, it's unfortunate to see what's happening to the whole sport, including The Ring. Personally, I only consider its champions as legitimate. A.J. Liebling would be mortified.

On a side note, I'm reading "The Professional" by W.C. Heinz and it's hard to put down. If anybody can get their hands on it, it's definitely worth the read.

 

To reference the elephant in the room, the fact that MMA has overtaken boxing in popularity makes me grit my teeth and mumble obscenities every time I think about it.

 

"The Professional" is on Kindle.

 

There were probably people who harumphed because they wanted football to go back to the days before the forward pass was legal and baseball with legal spitballs. MMA is popular because boxing is the combat equivalent of basketball before they took the bottoms of the peach baskets.