April 13, 2006
TOKYO, JAPAN
Apart from a controversy on the verdict of the Floyd Mayweather-Zab Judah IBF welterweight title bout last Saturday, there was another serious problem therein. Yours truly served as commentator of the fight telecast live to Japan from Las Vegas. Problem was in their gloves. Mayweather used Winning gloves of Japan, while Judah Everlast of the US. At everyone’s glance, the sizes of their gloves were quite different. Mayweather’s white gloves looked much bigger than those of Judah’s black gloves. The general impression didn’t come from the difference of the color but from the shape and structure of their gloves. Should a boxer wish to defend himself from his opponent’s hard punches, a bigger shaped gloves might be effective. On the contrary, should a hard-puncher hopes to punish his opponent with bigger damage, a smaller shaped gloves might be effective.
It might be a bad tendency that boxers can select gloves of any brand they like. It seemed an exaggerated freedom that the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) allowed Mayweather and Judah, or previously Erik Morales and Manny Pacquiao in their rematch, to use any gloves they select provided that the weight of gloves should be same (8 ounce for a glove). That’s not fair. The fight should be competed fair and square, definitely with the same conditions for both boxers, with the gloves of the same brand; Everlast, Grant, Reyes, Winning, or whatever. Otherwise, boxing will become an unfair sport.
Lately, in Japan, there happened a dispute on gloves at the rules meeting prior to the WBC bantamweight title bout in Kobe on March 25. We had a customary ceremony where both parties, champion Hozumi Hasegawa and challenger and ex-champ Veeraphol Nakhonluang-Promotion, were supposed to select the gloves to be used for their rematch. The Japan Boxing Commission (JBC) prepared red gloves for the champ and blue gloves for the challenger for the sake of clarifying the boxers on the TV screen. Veeraphol’s manager Suchart Pisitwuttinan from Thailand, however, very strongly insisted that the gloves in same color should be used for the bout, and the JBC finally had to accept his proposal under the name of fair play. When a lady wears red suits or blue suits, our impression on her slimness may differ. Like that, even if only the colors of the gloves of the same brand for the champ and the challenger were different, such an insistence of Suchart logically stood.
The NSAC is a leading commission in the world, and should show a good example to all over the world. Modernization isn’t necessarily improvement. Given too much freedom, the game of boxing may deteriorate against the fairness. It is really hoped that the Mayweather-Judah bout was the very last ever that each boxer was rendered an undesirable and unnecessary right to select the gloves of ANY BRAND.