Boxing has become a real freak show

If there has ever been a more blatant fix in boxing than Mickey Rourke's so-called contest in Moscow, I'd like to see it.

There was nothing about Rourke's KO punch that resembled a knockout blow.

I pat my dogs harder than the 62-year-old actor tapped Elliot Seymour, 29, on the side of his body, forcing him to drop to a knee for the first count.

Seymour stayed down after the second knockdown, the result of an equally insipid "punch".

In the abbreviated video of the fight I watched, which is available on the internet, Seymour throws nothing (apart from the fight itself).

It seemed he had been ordered not to hit Rourke on his plastic surgery.

It was claimed in a newspaper report subsequently that the fight was indeed fixed, with Seymour, a hobo, happy to take the cash.

Because professional boxing on this planet is run by so many different sanctioning bodies, you can safely bet that there will be no action taken.

But the fight did get me wondering whether Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will finally get it on only when they are in their 60s.

Don't laugh - this is the freak show that boxing has become at times.

And things aren't that much better at home.

It's been almost a year since Sport Minister Fikile Mbalula paraded Mayweather to kickstart his Reawakening the Giant programme, aimed at resuscitating boxing in the nation.

Well, Rip van Winkle is still snoring his head off.

Boxing is still off SABC's schedule - the blackout has lasted the better part of four years, and that will impact negatively on the skills base in this country.

Boxing is a trade you learn in the ring. You pick up only so much in the gym and in sparring. Fighters need to fight - whether they are champions or journeymen.

If the average boxing career lasts 10 years, then the generation that started in 2010 is already badly undercooked in terms of ring craft.

And that means the next generation will have almost nobody to learn from, and so it could go on.

Mbalula displayed his lack of appreciation for skills at his Sports Awards function on Sunday night when he presented a posthumous lifetime achievement award to Phindile Mwelase, the female boxer who died following a knockout loss in October.

Though her story was tragic, Mwelase was, to be brutally honest, no "Million Dollar Baby"; she never won a professional fight, for goodness sake.

Moreover, the minister has potentially prejudiced the investigation he himself called into Mwelase's death.

An investigation is critical - I for one would like to know why she was sanctioned to fight in an eight-rounder when she had never even won a four-rounder.

Maybe she should not have been in the ring at the time she got caught with the fatal punch in the sixth round.

But now the investigators might conclude that, on the basis of the minister's award, Mwelase was a good boxer and therefore worthy of being in an eight-rounder.

Mwelase might not have deserved an award, but her death does deserve an impartial and thorough investigation.

The lives of future boxers could depend on it.

By the way, there was another oddity with the awards show.

For at least the first hour or so the presenters advised fans to vote telephonically for their favourite Sports Star nominees.

The odd thing is that the organisers had issued a press release - some four hours before the show even started - listing all the category winners, including Portia Modise as Sports Star.

I can't help wondering how many wasted votes there were.