Down for the Count?

Rarely have the sport's pitfalls been more glaring than now.

"When people tell me that boxing has a black eye, I say that boxing ran out of black eyes in 1910," says Bert Sugar, who has spent much of his life writing about the sport.

The problems begin with organization, or lack thereof. Unlike other major sports, boxing has no central governing body that can ensure the safety of the participants. That task is left up to state commissions, which are often motivated by political interests and profiteering.

If boxers are banned from fighting in one state - because of health problems - for example, it is easy for them to find work in a state where the restrictions are not so tight. Boxing's coveted championship belts and rankings are controlled by more than a dozen sanctioning bodies, a veritable alphabet soup, most of which are headquartered outside the US.

The most prominent one in America, the International Boxing Federation (IBF), has been tainted by corruption. Four high-ranking IBF officials were recently found to be taking payoffs in exchange for changing boxers' rankings. Promoters Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner testified in court that they had paid bribes.

The organization is currently under the control of a federally appointed monitor. "Those four individuals [accused of corruption] are no longer with us," says Daryl Peoples, the IBF's ratings committee chair. "We're pretty sure that the federal monitoring will end shortly."

But boxing is really run by the almighty dollar, which is most effectively shoveled in by pay-per-view events run by the cable-television stations HBO and Showtime. A premium event, especially one featuring Mike Tyson, a convicted felon, can attract more than 1 million viewers who pay upward of $50 to watch the event from their homes.

Following closely behind the television networks in the money trail is a small cadre of promoters who often use strong-armed, shady tactics to make quick money. When promoter Don King recently signed heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman to a deal with a $5 million signing bonus, Rahman walked out of the meeting with a duffel bag stuffed with $500,000 in cash.

Rahman, however, is the exception. Most boxers are cut out of the real money, giving up about half of their earnings to managers, trainers, and licensing fees, and even more to bad investments. Joe Louis, one of the greatest boxers in history, retired broke.

"Boxing is still beset by corruption," says Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Nevada who is an avid fan and who has taken the lead in efforts to reform the sport. "This is still a very dangerous sport."

"Generally speaking," Mr. McCain adds, "[state] boxing commissions are used by governors as a place to give political awards. A large number of boxing commissioners wouldn't know a boxing glove from a catcher's mitt."

McCain, the former chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which oversees sports, has already won approval for two measures: the Professional Boxing Safety Act of 1996 and the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000, which aim to improve boxing safety and take care of the participants by developing a pension fund.

McCain, a former boxer in high school and in the Navy, admits that neither law has been particularly successful, partially because they have not been uniformly enforced.

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