Reid, McCain make wrong call for federal oversight of boxing

While most of us are content to deliver the usual jeers and catcalls of judicial blindness so often associated with professional boxing, Reid and McCain aren’t satisfied to stop there. As the U.S. Senate’s biggest fight fans, they’re once again calling for the creation of a federal boxing commission to police the careworn blood sport.

Now, I don’t claim any boxing expertise, even though as a kid I all but lived at Johnny Tocco’s Ringside Gym and for a short time was a licensed second for the late cornerman. I wouldn’t pretend to be able to cure all boxing’s ailments.

But federal oversight? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

For the moment, save your jokes about the effectiveness of federal regulation of Wall Street, the mortgage industry and tax-dodging corporate barons. Forget for now that the last time Congress addressed a sports issue it resulted in major league grandstanding on baseball’s steroid use.

Congress had a chance to regulate boxing when the mob ran it, but didn’t. Hearings were held that embarrassed the Blinky Palermo types, but then the sport’s fedoras and carnival barkers returned to business as usual.

At the risk of redundancy, Congress had an opportunity to better regulate boxing when Don King choreographed it. It didn’t. King pulled the strings of the heavyweight division more astutely than Jim Henson manipulated Kermit the Frog. The Don of boxing laughed all the way to the bank.

Congress could have intervened in professional boxing when its sanctioning organizations were openly extorted by slippery foreign brokers whose only reason for being was to juggle the rankings and collect their piece of the action. But it didn’t act then, either.

Historically, boxing doesn’t change its stripes. It changes frontmen. And Congress can’t find gambling in Casablanca.

Now that boxing is down at the heels — some would say down for the count – Reid and McCain are coming out of their ringside seats and entering the square circle. Bully for you, boys, but you’re propping up a punchy palooka.

Perhaps the strangest element of this latest shout for federal regulation is the event that apparently precipitated it: a wrong call in the Pacquiao-Bradley championship fight at the MGM Grand Garden.

Three experienced judges weighed each round, and many observers argue they got the decision wrong. But no one with a lick of sense is shouting "fix." Two of the three judges were considered among Nevada’s finest.

So where’s the scandal?

Stranger still is Reid’s pugilistic doublespeak. While he called for federal regulation of the sport after the Las Vegas fight, he was quick to call the Nevada Athletic Commission "the best boxing organization in the country supervised by the state." He added that any national boxing commission would be patterned after Nevada’s regulatory structure.

Say what?

Some guys can punch with either hand. Reid jabs effectively out of either side of his mouth.

Maybe that’s where Top Rank Chairman Bob Arum learned it. Just days ago Arum vocally called for an investigation into the Pacquiao-Bradley championship. Now that two Senate heavyweights are calling for a federal commission, Arum is on his bicycle, backpedaling.

The battle for boxing’s battered soul was counted out long ago. If our esteemed politicians are truly interested in the sport’s survival, they will expand their focus to include the increasingly popular and directly competing Ultimate Fighting Championship. It’s as tightly controlled a sport as any in existence. How about it, boys?

I know one thing: We’ve all heard that corny tune about federal regulation many times before.

Unless they plan to deliver some fresh material, it’s time Reid and McCain grabbed hats and canes and took their tired act on the road.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith. Follow him on Twitter @jlnevadasmith.