On Monday the WBC did something that Alphabet Organizations
always do, they ranked Manny Pacquiao as Floyd Mayweather #1 challenger and
mandatory defense. Now In the old days (Pre Twitter) there would be an outcry
about the organization itself, their ranking practices and the arbitrary,
political way they go about their business-back then the makers of the trinkets
were uniformly challenged by fans at every turn. But today, if you are an
alphabet crew life must be good because there’s a new villain in town that
nobody ever counted on arriving-the boxing fan. Yep, the fan aka “the customer”
have shown themselves to be undeserving of an organized coherent fight game
because they’ve broken every cardinal rule in the book when it comes to being a
paying customer. They’ve started to identify with the very
people who ask them for premium costs in exchange for a defective service.
For one, paying customers don’t personalize the people behind
a given service especially if those people are committed to providing “pieces”
of a service. When you pay a PPV price in 2013 it is complicity understood that
you are only watching ½ of what the promoter can offer you in a particular
weight class, and yet they demand inflationary prices when most of your
salaries have flat lined. If you pay a cable subscription fee and buy PPV’s
from both premium networks you are not out of your sorts to demand these
entities work in conjunction (with one another) to provide the customer the
best Boxing has to offer-YOU’RE THE CUSTOMER.
The NFL is a conglomerate of megalomaniacs who agree to a
schedule and provide packages of content to several networks for billions of
dollars but none of it would work if the customers weren’t provided competitive
conclusions. You can see any team on one of 4 different networks throughout the
season and everybody makes sure these megalomaniacs profit equally from
providing a product that consumers trust.
This is why a football ref makes a bad call and has to consider relocating
while Steve Smoger can sleep like a baby after almost letting Glen Tapia get
his career shortened on live television.
Boxing fans allow
two programmers and two promotional teams to pick sides and refuse to do
business with one another- this refusal is akin to colluding together in order
to put promotional interests ahead of providing financially vested consumers a
reliable product. Not only will these two firms refuse to enter into
negotiations to provide the best programming to the customers who pay at the gate
and through PPV they work in monopoly to assure no outside promoters try
to answer the demand of the marketplace. The sad part is boxing fans now work
in conjunction with these firms, pitting sides amongst themselves and defending
the destructive polarization and the players who provide the limited services
they receive.
Even the Mafia understood war was bad for business, and they
often killed one another for the right to take your union dues to build casinos.
Union members didn’t bicker with one another over which Mobster had the most
swag or deserved to exploit them-the ones who knew what was happening to their
dues didn’t glamorize the likes of Bugsy Segal.
Boxing fans piggyback the juvenile stances and statements of
warring factions as if they are paid to do so, because (now) the argument over
who deserves to fight whom is more rewarding than the actual fight. The players
have worn the fan down, and through Stockholm syndrome the fan now identifies
with the business entities who blatantly tell them “YOU WILL NOT GET THE
PRODUCT YOU PAY FOR”. Customers should never allow themselves to be treated as
oppressed victims unable to do something about current conditions, boxing isn’t
the NFL folks-it’s a poorly built house of cards, and it would be catastrophic
to any PPV to come up 500.000 buys short of projections. These are numbers the
NFL picks its teeth with and yet they care about what you think, because they
know if they give you “your” football it’s like a license to print money. Unlike
the “old boy” network in boxing who can only feast on short sighted bank robberies.
If people can use Twitter for Global Protest they can certainly use it to
#OccupyBoxing. Twitter tricked fans into thinking these people “know” them and thus
they’ve become fantasy managers, fake assed Al Haymons and spokespersons for
entities who do nothing but fleece them- and if you point this out to them in
the most objective terms they regurgitate worn out slogans (Courtesy TMT) and
call you a “hater” – another term that should be stricken from adult discourse.
It is a disturbing trend when “men” are willing to blindly give their money to
a polarized system and accept a false Cold War scenario as a reason fights can’t
be made- and nobody blinked when Big Bad Bernard Hopkins used the “term” to
rationalize calling out a man 25 lbs. lighter than him. In a just system he
wouldn’t be viable, in a just system he’d have to prove he’s an “Alien” by
facing a “Superman”…. or go home.
When a man spends his money for something empathy for the
seller should be a non-factor, do you have sympathy for the poor schmuck who served
you cold French fries yesterday? Hell no you don’t. Then you shouldn’t have feelings one way or
another about men who are supposed to bring you a damned sport- stop advocating
for Floyd Mayweathers “business” and handle your own finances with
discriminating taste. Twitter has revealed fight fans who are more fans of the
cold war than of boxing, grown men who think it’s cool that Mayweather ( after
4 years!) can say “Pacquiao who?” while telling you Amir “Chinny” Khan is up
next for your 75$. Men don’t allow someone to tell them “I don’t want to
make Bob Arum any money” because MEN know that ultimately before it becomes
Floyds or Bobs “money” it was theirs!. The answer to Manny who? Is Manny
“Better than Amir Khan” Pacquiao that’s who, men don’t sit around gossiping
over the fucking details if they have no direct involvement in them- men say
“work it out” or you get nothing. Since when did guys feel it was their job to
play school yard insult games over two guys they’ll never meet? Since when did
men think gossiping over another guys finances and who deserves what in a fight
was even manly? There are websites devoted to keeping these ridiculous "divisions
within divisions" going, actual propaganda jackals who parrot men who
don’t want to provide unified champions in every weight class in exchange for your
dollars.
And you visit them every day looking for the silly next put
down you can retweet to your friends.
Manny Pacquiao is a boxer, a fine one who I’d rather see
fight Floyd Mayweather on May 3rd 2014 than anyone else- I’m too
busy as an adult worrying about filling out my own tax forms than to worry
about his. In fact, I don’t care about Vegas getting the fight nor who “needs”
whom- like any smart consumer I know that all parties involved need me not the other
way around. If you ever noticed Boxing is the one sport that mirrors our two
party political system where palms are greased and nothing ever gets done.
Sports are supposed to deliver us from that, which is why mainstream sports
fans will always choose the socialism of the NFL over the corporate fascist
dictatorship of boxing. Sport is supposed to deliver you into a purely merit
driven matrix where Champions are people who have defeated all capable
challengers through direct confrontation- Boxing used to be the purest
expression of this principle. Being the paying customer can either be an
empowering experience or one of manipulation and subjugation and it’s clear
which path fight fans have chosen. We are more informed than ever, but now
we’ve developed a habitualized taste for minutiae and bullshit, we’ve replaced
the great addiction to action fights with a “jones” for press releases and
company warfare.
Smart men of Arum and Schaefer’s ilk have often known the
true path to domination is by subjecting less smart people to a chaotic
environment. Through sleight of hand we’ve all lost track of the ball (the
truth) and now focus only on the shell game played by a mere handful of people.
Middle Class fighters have no choice but to sign on to this paradigm because
they know the market will not fund nor facilitate a competing model to what we
have now. The misguided will sign up for this farce the same way obscure,
unsigned rap groups enlisted to shoot at one another back in 1996 on the behalf
of two millionaires. I was there, and I saw people get hurt that were never afforded
the dignity of a documentary of compilation CD. I am a conscientious objector
to the “Cold War” in Boxing, I am not an apologist for Mayweather or Pacquiao-
I am a customer and I refuse to say a foul word about either man via social
media. I deserve to see the best
fighters in each division face one another (within a reasonable period of time)
no matter the network or Promotional Firm In exchange for my (monthly)
subscription dollars. I don’t care about any of the ancillary issues
surrounding the promoter’s “job” to create a PPV star; if those issues
interfere with providing the customer with a valuable product then customers
should divest themselves until said party does. Instead of defending the self-interest
of Floyd Mayweather fans should try imitating it, your budget will look a lot
better and you just may exude a little more self-respect in other parts of your
life.
And if you choose to do nothing at all, at least have the decency
to stop rooting for people who mean you no good.
No comments:
Post a Comment