Columnist Dean Juipe: Boxing never really down for the count

EVERY YEAR it's said boxing has never been worse. It's an annual complaint.

And there's always a certain truth to it, as the sport is so intertwined with unsavory characters and events that at any given time in history it appears to be one step away from ruination.

Yet the obituaries are habitually premature. As terminal as its everyday appearance may be, boxing is both inherently resourceful and subjectively appealing.

It has survived in spite of itself and it always will.

In boxing circles, every conversation these days includes one or more parties saying or agreeing that they've never seen the game in such pitiful condition. Indiscretions have been piled upon indiscretions until it seems as if the sport will implode.

There's the Mike Tyson traveling circus and the profoundly negative impact of his applying for a license in New Jersey when it was Nevada that sidelined him; there are nonstop accusations of subterfuge and malfeasance on the part of the leading promoters; and there's the out-and-out reluctance of the champions to face each other, like heavyweights Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. Add in the usual assortment of televised mismatches and club-level yawners, plus the loss of the weekly TV staple Tuesday Night Fights later this month and a strong case can be made for believing boxing is on its last leg.

The trouble with that argument is simple: There has never been a time when boxing wasn't in turmoil. From its earliest days to the present, the sport's identity has been largely shaped by a few heroic acts surrounded by countless displays of ineptitude, larceny and criminal misconduct.

Since time began, professional prize fighting has been a haven for tough guys who don't mind taking one to the face and smooth talkers who find a way to capitalize. That will never change.

If it wasn't for the sport's flare for the unexpected and the dramatic, it would have disappeared long ago. But there are just enough invigorating moments in boxing to keep adding a fan for every one who turns away in disgust.

Yet even the disgusted won't surrender without a struggle. It takes one more last straw on top of those previous 100 last straws before their legs will bow under the weight.

Boxing -- faults, blahs and all -- resiliently endures.

Complainants today see the sport as corrupt, its behind-the-scenes machinations as beyond belief and its central figures as almost detestable. They cite, quite accurately, the need for centralized rather than factious power and a desire for an honesty and forthrightness that has never existed.

They wonder why there's no clearinghouse for records or information, why the participants aren't unionized and why sanctioning bodies proliferate rather than disband.

They wonder how much more they personally can take before being overwhelmed by indifference.

They wonder the same things their fathers wondered.

Boxing has its good, funny and decent people but for the most part it's a dirty, rotten pastime with little redeeming social value.

It's no better or worse than it ever was or will be.

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