What I Think: A Boxing Blueprint

Tell us there’s still hope, still a chance for redemption, still a longshot you just haven’t tried yet. Tell us there’s still a flicker of life before Chapter 7 liquidation.

But if WBC President Jose Sulaiman is right and the WBC is about to go belly up because it can’t pay the $31 million owed to German fighter Graciano Rocchigiani, well, it’s only right that someone picks up the ball and runs with it. The dream has to continue.

Face it. We can’t be losing any sanctioning bodies in the fight game. It’s like losing one of the Three Stooges. What are we going to do with just Moe and Larry to laugh at? You gotta have Curly around to bounce some bricks off his head or it isn’t funny. The timing is all wrong. The jokes don’t fly and the slapstick doesn’t work.

If the WBC folds, all we’ve got left to poke fun at is the IBF and the WBA, and though they’re genuine knee slappers in their own right, we’re still losing one-third of our target group.

Sure, there’s the World Boxing Organization, but picking on the WBO is like giving Pee Wee Herman a wedgie. There’s not much satisfaction in teasing the little guys.

So if the WBC gets KO’d and there’s room for me to move in, I’m going to start my own sanctioning body and I’m going to call it the WIT, an acronym for the “What I Think.”

My first new rule is, you weigh-in at noon on the day of the fight, not the day before or two days before or a month before. Noon, the day of the fight. That’s the way it used to be, and that’s the way it should be. I figured it was changed because some snot-nosed kid TV executive realized you could get an additional day of TV and newspaper coverage if you weighed-in on the day before the fight.

Don’t tell me earlier weigh-ins are safer for the fighters because if they weigh-in on the day of the fight, they might go into the ring weak from dropping weight. What’s dangerous is a legitimate featherweight suddenly facing a guy who goes from the scales to the buffet line and puts on 17 pounds overnight and at fight time is now a welterweight quickly pushing junior- middle.

Second, we go back to 15 rounds for a championship fight. None of this 12-round BS. That way, you have five championship rounds to prove yourself instead of 2.

Third, the WIT doesn’t officially recognize women boxers. They do not exist, are not mentioned, are out of the loop. This is strictly a “men’s only” club. Women are the best thing going. Why would we want to watch them beat each other up? I don’t belong on a gymnastics balance beam and women don’t belong in the prize ring. Unless, of course, they’re carrying large signs with numbers on them, telling me what round it is. Then I’m all for it.

Fourth, like everyone else, Don King has to buy a ticket for any WIT-sanctioned fight.

Fifth, it makes no difference how the other alphabet bodies rank their champions and the contenders. The WIT rankings will be determined strictly by – now get a load of this – how good they are. The best fighters will be ranked higher then the mediocre fighters, regardless of the IBF and the WBA rankings.

I know. It’s a new concept, but I think it might work.

Sixth, WIT headquarters would be located somewhere in the United States, probably in my garage.

Though the newly-formed WIT is still in its preliminary stages, I’ve already set the stage for those critics who don’t like change in the fight game and don’t like my ideas.

Go ahead. Say it to my face, you’re “Not Interested in What I Think.”

Isn’t the acronym for that, NITWIT?