Marty Cohen Has a Plan to Take Boxing Away from the Alphabet Boys

Maybe this is the kind of thing that can only be embraced by young people, who don’t know any better, or by old people, who have been around long enough to remember when things were done differently. And better.

Place Marty Cohen firmly among the latter. The guy has been around. He dates back to the turn of the century and says he was on a first-name basis with Mayor Jimmy Walker. This year, Cohen will accept the award named for Walker--given for long and meritorious service to boxing--from the Boxing Writers Association at its annual awards dinner. Wednesday night, Cohen sent his surrogate son, Michael Dokes, into the Madison Square Garden ring against Razor Ruddock in a fight that very well could have ended Dokes’ career as a contender--he was knocked out in the fourth round. That’s OK when you’re a 31-year-old heavyweight, but Cohen, 92 years old on paper, but young where it counts, has plans for the future. If not his, then for the future of boxing.

Cohen says it is time to roust the Alphabet Boys--the “Latin American dictators,” he calls them--and reclaim boxing for the people to whom it truly belongs, the fighters and the fans. He wants to start yet another organization, but with a difference. One that gives to the fighters rather than takes from them. One that does away with corrupt and arbitrary ratings, mismatches masquerading as title fights, promoters who use puppet organizations to play out personal agendas, and the collection of exorbitant sanctioning fees that are little more than extortion.

“There is a cancer that has gotten hold of boxing,” Cohen said. “The sport has fallen into the hands of the crooks and the lackeys.”

Cohen calls his baby the United International Boxing Union, but at his age, he’s married only to Lillian, his wife of 40 years. He’s flexible on the name, but not on the concept. Call it a pipe dream--perhaps “cigar dream” would be more appropriate because Cohen is never without a stinking stogie--but it is an idea worth listening to.

“I’m not interested in creating another alphabet,” Cohen said. “I’m interested in saving boxing. We’ve got to return boxing to the people, where it belongs.”

Cohen’s details are sketchy, but the basics are these: The UIBU, or whatever he winds up calling it, would be a public, profit-making organization that would rate boxers, designate champions and hold title matches. Presidents would serve one, five-year term. No “Presidents for life,” a la Jose Sulaiman or Gilberto Mendoza. Ratings would be done by a committee made up of members of the boxing media, and perhaps determined in part by fan voting. Title bouts would return to 15 rounds, elimination bouts to 12. Return matches would be taboo, no exceptions.

Most important, the organization would pay a salary to its members, unlike the existing organizations, whose officers are unpaid but never account for the enormous funds they take in. Just where do those sanctioning fees--generally three percent of a boxer’s purse--go? Realize that on a purse like Mike Tyson’s $20 million payday against Michael Spinks, a sanctioning body would collect $600,000 in exchange for a cheap plastic title belt.

“We would have to collect some kind of fees, just to keep the organization going,” Cohen said. “But we would limit it to something like $50,000. And we will use it just to pay expenses. We won’t take any handouts from promoters. No promoter will be any part of this organization. It will be run by people who have the good of boxing at heart.”

Of course, there are questions. What is to stop the WBA, WBC and IBF from continuing to conduct business as usual even if Cohen’s organization gets off the ground? As long as the networks continue to bankroll any fight with an alphabet title attached to it, will anything really change? How do you attract top-name fighters--Buster Douglas, Julio Cesar Chavez, Mike Tyson, Michael Nunn, Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor, etc.--to give up well-known, if not respected, titles, and throw in with a group of upstarts? Who’s to believe that promoters will turn their backs on the sweetheart deals they have enjoyed with the corrupt organizations? Won’t this all just complicate the mess even further?

Cohen admits he does not have the answers, but he is willing to seek them, with the help of the people in boxing he respects. He says he has the support of Sen. Bill Bradley, as well as businessmen Lee Iaccoca and Victor Potamkin. All he knows is that he has had a craw full of alphabet soup. As he spoke, he struggled to tear off a WBA patch from his jacket -- he still heads the WBA’s Intercontinental Championship Division, at least through the Dokes-Ruddock fight, which was for its heavyweight title--but settled for a nail clipper to snip the threads.

“I don’t give a damn about the patch,” Cohen said. “I just don’t want to ruin the jacket.”

Never let it be said that Marty Cohen does not have his priorities straight.

Angelo Dundee on the usually sartorially splendid Michael “The Silk” Olajide, whom Ange is training to fight Thomas Hearns on April 28 in Atlantic City: “He’s serious for this one. How do I know? He came into the gym with a terry cloth robe on.”

Dan Duva, one of boxing’s pseudo-geniuses, correcting Nevada Athletic Commission physician Flip Homansky, who reported that Meldrick Taylor lost two pints of blood in his fight against Julio Cesar Chavez: “He didn’t lose blood. He swallowed it.”

Murad Muhammad on Marty Cohen, who boasts that at 92, he still bounds out of bed at 4 a.m. and stays awake all day: “I told him, ‘When I get to be your age, and I wake up in the morning, I wouldn’t go back to sleep either.’ ”