Joe Rogan - Teddy Atlas on the Corruption in Boxing

All of that stuff is legitimate. It's a problem. Something that should be looked at. It's just a shame that the judging is so poor and it's been this way for so long. Well, see the boxing, I mean you have it, and I'm not saying this in a derogatory way, in some ways it's a good way, but you have a dictator running, you know, UFC. And no, but it's okay to have a dictator sometimes, because at least you have rules that are adhered to. You at least have structure. And you know, as long as they're not, you know, taking people out and killing them. I know what you're saying. And so boxing has no real accountability, no structure across the board, no real, you know, lateral structure conformity. Nothing unilateral, because you have different states that have different commissions and you know, they're supposed to be tied together, but they all act differently. And there's no national commission. There's no body. There's no dictator. There's no czar. There's no there's no NBA commissioner. There's no NFL commissioner. There's no MLB commissioner that overlooks and polices the whole sport. And there's no separation of church and state, so to speak, where the people making the money in the sport are separated, truly separated from the people supposedly administrating this. There's no separation. I mean, promoters actually that are making the money and have obviously a horse that's running in the game, so to speak, that night, that they want that fighter to win, they pay the judges. And there's no, there's no, again, there's no buffer. There's no separation where you can have promoters and managers that can actually go to the commission and say, we don't want these judges to judge. They can't say, put this judge in, but they can knock judges out. And the commissions will listen to them. The alphabet organizations, they're corrupt. They are. I mean, it's not Teddy Atlas saying it. It's everybody saying it. There's very few people that are going to say they're not corrupt. Well, they're corrupt. I mean, if you're going to be honest about it and you don't have an agenda where you're afraid to say it because you have an agenda, which a lot of people do in my business, they have agendas, so they're not going to say it because they're part of it. If they're not part of it, they're friendly with people that are part of it and they want to have access. They want to have relationships. So they stay away from it. And they understand how the corruption works. So they understand, is it a smoky room with cigars, like the old days where Frankie Carball was running things and you put an envelope? No, it's not that. But you might be paying $30,000 for an ad at a convention for the WBA or the WBC or IBF or WBO or whatever the heck they are. And you might be paying $30,000 for an ad. You know why you paid the $30,000 for that. I don't think that you'd just like to see your name in the ad in the brochure. There was a purpose behind paying that ad. So there's no, again, you have the administrators of the sport, the commissions, and then you have the alphabet organizations that get paid a sanctioning fee from the champion. So they want that champion to win. And so they get the sanctioning fee. And especially if he's a popular champion. So now you have nobody saying, well, the manager can't talk to the sanction organization, promoter can't, of course they can talk to them and say, I want my guys rated high. Of course they have access. So they have access to talking to somebody, influencing somebody to move their guy up in the ratings. These are honest ratings. And they have access to telling an organization, well, you know, I'd like to push a mandatory. I'd like to push my guy to get the mandatory, which means of course that he's got to fight him within a certain period of time. He's got to fight the champion. That's missing an MMA. Yeah. That's absolutely missing an MMA. So you have all that stuff going on. And where was the, where was the oversight? Yeah. Where's the oversight? Where's the policing? Where's the line? Because again, people making money, people running the sport, people making money, people administrating the sport. It's not supposed to blur. It's supposed to be a separation. Now, if you know where to go in Europe, America, United States too, but all through Europe where there's a lot of big fights, there was just a big fight with Joshua in London. He drew 90,000 people, which is good for the sport. And it's, it's, it's incredible. But if you know where restaurant to go to the night before big fight, you will walk in a restaurant. I've been there. You will walk in the restaurant. I'm not going to say something if I can't stand behind it. And you will see at the restaurant, it's a big table, kind of like the, you know, not the last supper, but it's, it's a big table. And you will see all the officials at that table that are going to work to fight the next night. And you will see the organizational heads, the heads of that sanctioning body and, and the guys that are in charge, the presidents, vice presidents, supervisors, judges, referees. And guess who the host of the dinner is? The promoter. Something wrong with that. I mean, there's something greatly wrong with that. So the host of the dinner, it's a big bill, obviously. I mean, it's a lot of people. It's a good restaurant. They're eating all the best stuff, drinking the best wines and everything else. So it's a big bill. And it's being picked up by the promoter who wants a specific fighter to win that night. And he's got all, he's got access to all the judges, all the officials, all the organizational heads. Now, so I would say to the people that are listening out there that just to make the analogy that really, I think would hit home, the New York Yankees, they're obviously a universally known name and brand, the sort of organization, maybe the biggest of all time. So how about in New York, you go to the best restaurant and a night before a World Series game, you walked into the restaurant and you saw all the umpiring crew, all the officials that are in charge of the umpiring for the World Series game, sitting at a dinner hosted by the Steinbrenner's problem, problem, problem, problem, giant problem. And it can't happen because there's a commission would never let that happen because the integrity, the credibility of the sport would be down the tubes in one moment before you could finish your shrimp cocktail. And but so it can't happen. It happens unchecked in box, but it happens all the time in boxing and just to look of impropriety is wrong. It should be wrong. It should be wrong in baseball. It should be wrong in football, should be wrong in envy, but it should be even more wrong in a sport where you risk so much. Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah, it's a very, very good point. And I don't know how you would ever fix that. I mean, how would you have some universal oversight of the entire sport? And how would you get everybody from the WBO, W, you know, WBC? They wouldn't. No, no, they don't care enough because the president of the United States started caring when there was a problem with baseball. He got he got involved. That was about steroids, though, right? Yeah, but it was a problem. But wasn't that a horseshit problem? I mean, it was a real problem, but it was more of a problem of they wanted to clean up the image because it's America's sport. And they had these people that were the fans were going to leave the game a little bit. So it was a problem. It was a problem. It was impacting them. It was impacting. Listen, it was impacting the perception of the game, which impacted the the gates, what they're going to make, and ultimately, the fan base, which, of course, impacts them financially. It impacts the country because less people care about this sport. You're going to see it less. And if you care about it, you're going to be one of the people that are left out. So it was a problem. And they can't. I don't I'm going to be careful saying this, but not that careful. But because you have to say it, I don't think that they care as much about the people in boxing. I don't think they do either. I just it's it's more of a dangerous, dirty sport in their eyes. Yeah. Yeah. And and the people that come into it and everything else, I'm not going to get into all the other stuff that you could get into that, you know, so popular to get into in some ways nowadays. You mean like racism? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to get into that because I don't want to. And I don't have, you know, definitive things to show for that. I just know how I feel. Well, the perception of sports, it's not it's not cherished the way baseball is cherished. When there's a big fight like Canelo and Triple G, people get excited and a lot of people will buy it. But it's not necessarily thought of as something that represents America. And particularly in Canelo, Triple G, you're talking about two people that aren't American to begin with. Yes.