Chinese boxing can be a heavy hitter
ON SATURDAY, Chinese featherweight boxer Xu Can won a professional world title by wresting the WBA crown from Puerto Rico's Jesus Rojas at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. He became the third Chinese boxer to win a professional championship. ThePaper.cn comments:
Xu won the match, not by luck, but with his own efforts.
He did a very good job in the match. From the first round, he fought rather aggressively and gained the upper hand over Rojas. The fight, which lasted 12 rounds, was excellent, with all three judges unanimously giving Xu the decision.
In some sense, the boxing profession of China as a whole has followed a similar path, too. It began flourishing in 2004, when Zou Shiming won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Athens. Then the sport gained popularity and there were finally professional matches. The gold medals of Chinese boxers at international competitions would be impossible without the prosperity of the industry as a whole.
However, there are still large gaps between the boxing industry of China and that of the world. The biggest problem is the lack of commercial matches, in which professional boxers can win prize money to support themselves, and the organizers can make profits to organize more competitions and in turn attract more youngsters to practice boxing. Only with more young people joining the profession will boxing truly flourish.
Besides, the most attractive matches to audiences are heavyweight ones, but the majority of achievements Chinese boxers make are at the featherweight level. Chinese boxers need to work harder in the heavyweight division.
The boxing profession might not have got as many resources as those of football and basketball, but its champions honor the whole nation. When audiences waved the Chinese flag at the Toyota Center to celebrate Xu's success, the whole world was watching and that's the best way of promoting patriotism. We hope sports officials will invest more in boxing, too, not only in football and basketball.
