| 27 April 2011
No matter who wins it in the end, Showtime's Super Six World Boxing Classic is already destined to go down in boxing history as an excellent idea in theory that proved very, very difficult to pull off in real life.
We've already seen injuries, disqualifications and a little bit of controversy during the round robin stages. So maybe it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that the tournament semifinals, scheduled to get going in just a few weeks, have hit a snag in the eleventh hour.
Dan Rafael of ESPN reported today that Arthur Abraham has threatened to pull out of his May 14 bout with Andre Ward, angered that the California State Athletic Commission is apparently going with a local judge and referee. Abraham's team claims that there was an agreement in place for a balanced panel of judges (one from California, one from Europe and one from neither the U.S. or Europe) and a referee from a neutral location.
Ward's promoter Dan Goossen is saying there was no agreement but also states that Abraham's accusation is false. It's apparently all up to Abraham as to whether or not the fight goes on.
It's easy to dump on Abraham here, and he does deserve some criticism. Seen as one of the pre-tournament favorites, he has looked small and slow in his losses to Andre Dirrell (where he was disqualified for hitting Dirrell on the mat) and Carl Froch. Now this act makes it seem like he fears a third loss and wants to take his ball and go home.
But King Arthur hasn't been the only participant to question the appearance of home cooking during the Super Six. None of the boxers fighting at home have lost a decision during the tournament, and while none of those decisions were of the type that make fans cry bloody murder, a couple at least raised some eyebrows - namely, Froch's victory over Dirrell in Nottingham and his loss to Mikkel Kessler in the latter's native Denmark. It's still a bad look for Abraham to complain about it at the last minute, but his stance isn't completely unjustified.
Ideally, all of the Super Six fights would have been contested at neutral sites. What made that unrealistic is that all of the individual bouts had to actually sell tickets, and one thing all of the contestants had in common when the event began (and the two substitutes along the way are like this too) was that none of them had proven an ability to sell out arenas outside of their respective local areas.
So ironically, one of the supposed strengths of the event when it was conceived - that the people in charge were smart enough to schedule many of the fights in places where they would make money - is threatening to unravel it as it comes down the stretch. It's probably a fitting end, given what's come before, but it will be a throughly unsatifying one for boxing fans if we don't get a true winner when it's all said and done.
