|
It's
Like Deja Vu All Over Again |
|
|
|
Big
Goose's Fistic Feathers Ruffled By 'Vicious' DiBella Blast On FNN;
Fires Right Back, Labeling Rival Promoter Harper Valley Hypocrite; Over To You, Lou Lou
Hypocrisy is a terrible thing, especially in boxing.
Before the start of the 2003 season, Major League Baseball told the umpires that it was moving to a new standard of umpiring.
No longer would it be permissible to defend an umpire's wrong calls by bending interpretations of the rules....Instead, umpires were encouraged to conference together on the field where necessary, but to get the call right - and to make the necessary choices and decisions to administer a more flexible, less rule-based, justice on the field. |
|
If necessary, where a call on the field is overruled, umpires are instructed to make such awards as they think would have happened had the call been made correctly in the first place.
For a legalistic person like myself (as stated by the writer), this is a drawback, but to baseball fans and Major League Baseball, interested in a fair contest, it's a significant net positive." Excerpt of an article titled Interference by Craig Burley for "Hardball Times."
Today, I read a piece on
FightNightNews.com where DiBella Entertainment head, Lou
DiBella, engaged in yet another vicious, unfounded and potentially hypocritical attack on our sport.
|
|
|
DiBella has his opinion and certainly is entitled to it. He often vehemently attacks all sides of the industry with limited or no actual knowledge of what he targets, such as the Toney-Peter decision. But, he also seems to selectively attack our industry in those instances when it does not conveniently serve his own interests.
No one ever called Toney-Peter a fixed fight. Why Lou would intimate that there was ever any thought of a fixed fight is outrageous. |
 |
|
|
This is the reason some promoters should think of the harm to the industry that supports their families before they rant and rave, in many instances, without any actual knowledge of the circumstances. This is one of the cases.
This is the same man that said he wanted his World Champion Jermain Taylor, a great fighter, to next fight Bozo the Clown. Can you imagine Bill Parcells saying he wants the Dallas Cowboys to play against a semi-pro team and mean it? His players would start a mutiny along with a reprimand from the NFL Commissioner. They wouldn't, and shouldn't, allow verbal denigration to their League and those that work so hard to ensure its credibility.
What Lou and a handful of others don't realize or fail to address, is that the WBC is mirroring exactly what has become commonplace in all of sports, including baseball, football and basketball. Each of these industries have the ability to review and overturn the official's call, including instant replay. This wasn't about clout or politics, it was about fairness, despite what Lou thinks or rants.
And the WBC attention and reasoning lies mostly with the fan.
Reporter Burley also wrote, "It hasn't worked perfectly smoothly - umpires have butchered some decisions - but Major League Baseball's continual hammering of the importance of getting the call right, no matter what the cost, has paid off in spades."
The WBC did not change the decision of the bout. They merely took in consideration the outcry by the majority of the media members, fans and boxing as a whole, to say there was a significant and legitimate dispute about the decision and after reviewing tape of the bout, concluded through a vote of their committee, that indeed there was sufficient reason to order a rematch to clearly determine a winner.
|
|
All major sports have made the resolution that the most important ingredient to its sustained success and marketability is the fan, and they've continually made the effort to protect their interests. The WBC makes a similar decision for the integrity of boxing and someone (with arguably an alternative agenda) looks at it as a political move. There seems to always be a bad apple or two in every bag, and the ones yelling the loudest are generally the ones on the other side of the fence. Or in this instance, not affecting a DiBella promoted fighter. |
|
Case in point: It seems when issues involve DiBella fighters he can take a stance that represents exactly what he attacks. "How could the scores be so close? When I heard Vernon Forrest,
"I thought I was
hallucinating", said Quartey's promoter, Lou DiBella. "Ike won the fight. I don't care what the judges said," DiBella said. "Why does an entire room see a fight one way and three people see it another way?...Disgrace! It's a disgrace....Why does it happen [that] an entire room can see it one way and three judges see it another way," he said. "There's a whole system that covers judging and you have to ask questions about the system."
Asked if he would file a petition to the New York State Athletic Commission regarding the decision, DiBella stated "Yeah of course, I'm going to file a petition like it's going to do any f**king good. Will it do any good? No. And by the way, six months from now, a lot of people are going to forget what they saw because that's how this f**king game is. But Ike Quartey won the fight."
Further, regarding his fighter Jose Navarro when he fought Katsushige Kawashima in 2004 for the WBC 115 pound title, DiBella stated after the fight, "I haven't even written 2005 on a piece of paper yet...and the filth of this business has already sullied the year. The damage done by a decision like this to a kid like Jose is immeasurable, emotionally and financially. Decisions like this, which are condoned and sometimes encouraged by the world sanctioning organizations, are destroying the sport."
So when we believe our fighter was wronged, as he did with his, we requested that the WBC review our concerns and followed all appropriate procedures. They did and granted us the rematch based on what is in the best interests of the sport, its participants and the fans. But unlike with Quartey or Navarro, we are condemned for requesting justice for our fighter and the sport. There is a difference between freedom of speech and self serving meritless attacks.
The difference with our sport compared to others is that the commissioners of the other sports would never allow the integrity of their sport being verbally attacked by owners, managers, or players without fining that person or suspending him from their respective sport.
We either need a commissioner to oversee the outrageous claims of people in our own industry, or simply show the door to the ones that believe they are "telling it like it is," when in reality it is "telling it like it is" in furtherance of their own agenda.
This decision of the WBC is a win-win for everyone, especially our loyal boxing fans.
Dan Goossen |
|
|
|
|
|
|
