Oleg Maskaev scored a technical knockout against heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman in the 12th and final round on Saturday night. The 37-year-old Kazakhstani joins Iron Curtain compatriots Wladimir Klitschko, Serguei Lyakhovich, and Nikolai Valuev as holders of heavyweight titles. From Sonny Liston to Lennox Lewis, a black man held the heavyweight championship. From 1962 through 2005, other than the Canadian-Jamaican-Brit Lewis, an American black held the heavyweight title--the real, the linear heavyweight championship. But now, in 2006, not only is the linear heavyweight champion white and foreign, but his co-titlists--holders of belts of varying importance--are also white and foreign. In fact, all of them boxed within the amateur system of the former Soviet Union. Where are all the American heavyweights? At Oklahoma, Penn State, and Miami? Perhaps. Boxing has declined as a sport across racial lines in the United States. There is an undefeated white American heavyweight--Joe Mesi--who, up until his career got derailed by Soviet fighter Vassily Jirov, contended for the heavyweight championship. And there is a black man, Samuel Peter, who might very well knock the heads off all of the current beltholders. Alas, Peter is a Nigerian. Where are the African Americans, who have owned this--the most illustrious title in all of sports--for most of the last one-hundred years? Where are today's Muhammed Alis, Joe Louises, Jack Johnsons, and Mike Tysons? They may be on the football field, in front of the classroom, in the board room. They're not in the ring.

Boxing has always been a sport based on socio-economics. Grow up in harsh tough conditions and have athletic skills, boxing could be a way to move up. First were the American Irish and Italians with some blacks. Then American blacks dominated along with some Hispanic fighters. As fortunes rise and people are removed from a hard lifestyle, the drive to prove oneself in the ring (along with the edge necessary to face an opponent in the ring) is removed along with social and economic needs. The current ex-Soviet Union is a tough place producing tough people who are moving in the same direction and will one day be on that upward trend.

I think you nailed it ASDF. Irish, Italians, and Jews, who played a major role in boxing in the 1930s, wouldn't have thought of doing do by, say, the 1980s because their economic fortunes had changed. Perhaps something similar is at work with blacks today. As their economic fortunes rise, their desires to hit the jackpot in such a dangerous endeavor fall.

Examining the true champions in the old-line eight boxing divisions, one finds an Argentinian, an Indonesian, a Thai, a Jamaican, a Kazakhstani, a Mexican, an American black, and a racially-mixed Mexican American. Boxing is truly the world sport. No equipment needed. It's as basic as running a race.

I'd forgotten about the Jews as they seem so far removed from the sport now because of their other more cerebral successes. Sometimes it's hard to imagine them as formidable pugilists but there was a time where there were some great Jewish fighters.