Gatti’s murder shows boxing’s irrelevancy

 

Sounding off

Ridiculous Romo:
When word broke yesterday that Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson split up, Cowboys fans predictably celebrated the supposed freeing of their quarterback. They’ll soon find out, though, that Romo himself is the real issue.

This is a QB that makes Simpson look as bright as Sonia Sotomayor. Romo showed his frat boy class by breaking up with Simpson the night before her birthday, too.
Need to hear more about:
Nike using the footage from the video it confiscated of a camper dunking on LeBron James to make a funny commercial.

Unless that becomes the plan, LeBron’s been exposed as being as much of a public relations baby as ousted LPGA commissioner of cluelessness Carolyn Bivens. And you thought it was bad when Adam Morrison cried before the final buzzer a few NCAA tournaments ago. METRO/CB

 

Sometimes it takes a sudden death for a sport to finally realize it long ago passed away. Any last illusions boxing held about being relevant ended when the savage murder of former champion Arturo Gatti brought about a near yawn from the tabloids and true crime princesses.

In a media world where any celebrity death is milked for ratings, Gatti’s sensationalistic demise — allegedly strangled by his wife’s purse strap while he slept — brought only minor attention.
It’s a little ghoulish to compare sports star death reactions (though not as bad as those celebrity death pools people play), but there’s no doubt that boxing backers are aware that their sport can’t even get attention when it crosses over into the police blotter.

If Mike Tyson’s not involved, boxing stories have no pulse — even when death is in the room. The biggest boxing story this year might just be Iron Mike’s cameo in “The Hangover.”

This Gatti indifference comes at the slowest time in sports, too. Right now, there’s the buildup to a buzz-less baseball All-Star game. We’re still days away from Tiger Woods teeing it up at Turnberry. And NFL training camps are still dark. If a boxing melodrama cannot gain traction now, it probably never can.

Even the wild-haired one knows the score. Don King paid tribute to Michael Jackson at a fight this weekend — not a word about a fighter who was brutally murdered. No, these days, Arturo Gatti’s just a dead guy in the wrong sport. Nancy Grace doesn’t even have time for a boxer.