Why don’t you watch boxing anymore?

Because the heavyweight division isn’t fun like it was in the 90’s?

That’s like saying you won’t watch football because the running backs are marginalized in today’s pass-happy style.

It’s like saying you won’t watch golf after Tiger Woods or tennis after the Williams’ sisters.

If you’re a fan, it’s about the sport, not the specific athletes. The Dallas Cowboys I’ve rooted for the last twenty years are (painfully) a long way from the Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irving teams of the mid 1990’s. I can say the same for the Mets where I grew up with Doc, Straw, Mookie and Piazza now it’s Chris Young and Lucas Duda. Or the Knicks, sure it was a blast when Starks, Mason, Oakley and Ewing roamed the Garden but lately it’s been Carmelo Anthony and not much else.

It’s time to adapt and adjust. It’s true the time of Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis and George Foreman is over. But seriously, it’s been over for twenty years.

The late Bert Sugar said the best American heavyweights are Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher. Big men have moved on to professional football or basketball instead of getting punched in the face for a living. And more power to them. But boxing isn’t dead or dying and the heavyweight division isn’t as bad as you think it is.

I’m making the argument both ways because the talking heads in sports have it all wrong. Boxing doesn’t need the heavyweight division to survive, it’s thriving in spite of it. And the division is not nearly as terrible as non boxing fans like Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon will shout on television for the 90 seconds a year they will talk about it.

Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko have dominated the division for the past ten years. Wladimir has successfully defended the title 16 consecutive times and is climbing the list toward Joe Louis at the top with 25 defences. Neither Klitschko has lost since 2004 and they’ve compiled a combined record of 32-0 with 23 KO’s since April 2004 when Wladimir last fell, to Lamon Brewster. Vitali recently retired but not before adding another win to his resume. He is now the mayor of Kiev in his native Ukraine. If these two men were born and raised in the United States they would be heroes and the division would be great because “we” would be dominating it.

It’s not just the Klitschko’s making the division compelling. Bermane Stiverne just won the title vacated by Vitali by defeating Chris Arreola in a sensational action fight that drew just shy of 1 million viewers on ESPN. American knockout artist Deontay Wilder (31-0, 31 KO) is next in line to challenge Stiverne and the winner of that late 2014 fight will challenge Wladimir for all the belts in 2015.

It’s time to focus on what boxing has instead of what it doesn’t. Boxing is stronger now than it was in the 90’s. The talent in the lower weight classes is as good as it’s ever been. After the 1990’s Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and soon Canelo Alvarez all became mega-sized pay-per-view superstars fighting predominantly between 140-154 pounds.

The real key to boxing’s success is the little(r) guys. The torch has been passed over from the heavyweights to the welterweights to be the new glamour division in the sport. The battles between the combinations of Manny Pacquiao, Oscar De La Hoya, Juan Manuel Marquez, Timothy Bradley, Ricky Hatton, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and soon Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Devon Alexander, Canelo Alvarez and others will keep the sport entertaining for the next decade. The question is, will you finally be there to see it?

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