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Some of Australian boxing’s biggest names believe the sport is dying and others hold grave fears for its future following the farcical end to Wednesday’s IBO cruiserweight title fight between Danny Green and Paul Briggs in Perth.
Defending champion Green needed just 29 seconds to stop Briggs with a punch that appeared at best to be just a glancing blow to the top of the challenger’s head.
The blow dealt to the sport’s credibility appears far more damaging.
Current IBO welterweight world champion Lovemore Ndou said boxing was dying a slow death.
“That’s just how the world is going to look at us now, boxing in Australia is dying slowly,” Ndou told AAP.
“If we keep on sanctioning fights like this, the sport is going to die.”
A poll on arguably the sport’s most significant website Fightnews.com suggested widespread scepticism about the outcome of the fight at Challenge Stadium.
Given a choice of whether it was a legitimate KO or a fixed one, a staggering 89 per cent of respondents had voted for the latter option by late on Thursday afternoon.
Triple world champion Jeff Fenech, who trained Green after he turned professional following the Sydney Olympics, expressed little hope for the future of Australian boxing.
“I don’t think it will recover, because I think it was already down on its knees,” Fenech told AAP.
Fenech’s old trainer Johnny Lewis roundly condemned what happened in Perth.
“It was absolutely disgraceful, boxing needed that like a boil on our backside,” he said.
“After last night I’m really concerned. I think credibility, that’s the one thing we’re lacking in the fight game here in Australia and have been for the last decade or so.”
Lewis, who was also one of Briggs’ former trainers, said his old charge, who hadn’t fought for almost three-and-a-half years, should never have been allowed to fight and warned if things weren’t fixed fast there could be a ring fatality.
Ndou called for a standard set of rules across Australia after Western Australia’s Professional Combat Sports Commission sanctioned the fight even though it was rejected by the Combat Sports Authority of NSW.
“The people that sanctioned the fight, they need to be fined or something,” he said.
Vic Darchinyan described Wednesday’s events in Perth as “very bad for Australian boxing” and feared they could impact negatively on people’s future decisions on whether to purchase fights on pay-per-view.
“I’m a pay-per-view fighter, if people aren’t going to like our fights and they are disappointed they are not going to buy any more, so they are not going to be following boxing, they are not going to support it,” Darchinyan told AAP.
But not every prominent boxing personality in Australia was quite so pessimistic.
Several boxing identities felt the sport’s best chance of repairing its reputation in Australia was to concentrate on the deeds of renowned warriors like WBO interim lightweight world champion Michael Katsidis, two-division world champion Darchinyan, Ndou and rising young IBO lightweight world champion Lenny Zappavigna.
Former undisputed light welterweight world champion Kostya Tszyu remained optimistic despite his disappointment in what transpired in Perth.
“Boxing is still going to be the number one contact sport,” Tszyu told AAP.
“The excitement during boxing fights is just impossible to compare.”
While Tszyu was confident boxing would remain ahead of its rivals, Fenech believed the sport had already fallen behind the massively popular UFC.
“It took an hour and a half (for UFC) to sell out Acer Arena and Danny Green couldn’t sell it out for (his fight against) Roy Jones, of course it (UFC) has taken over,” Fenech said.
Although describing the events in Perth as “a kick in the arse for our sport”, Fenech had some sympathy towards Briggs.
He assisted the former light heavyweight world title contender for a couple of sessions in the lead up to the fight and revealed he had urged Briggs to pull out to give himself more time.
Fenech said Briggs would have needed 16 to 20 weeks to prepare properly for the fight.
Ndou and Brendon Smith, the trainer and manager of Katsidis, believed Green should share responsibility for the fallout generated by the fight as he was involved in the promotion.
Smith said Green should either give the patrons at Challenge Stadium a refund or free entry to his next fight, but wasn’t concerned the happenings in Western Australia would necessarily do more damage to the sport.
He said boxing wasn’t on its knees and people would judge each event on its own merits rather than abandoning the sport.
IBO vice president Asia/Pacific Phil Austin accepted his organisation would also come under scrutiny and potential criticism for sanctioning the fight.
“Any time something like this happens, I think we can expect some heat, that goes without saying, but you will find there have been shorter fights for other organisation’s titles,” Austin told AAP.
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