May 6, 2000

My Review of KO Nation
by DscribeDC

DscribeDC: Yo, yo, yo....Everybody say hooooooooo....Throw ya hands in tha air! Wave 'em like ya just don't care! If you're feelin' just a little stoopid, everybody yell 'Hell, yeah'!....

KO Nation
An abomination
One train
That shoulda never gotten out the station
Runway, fancy intros
And a hokey set
Streamin' chatter from the chatters typin' on the Net
TV conspirers
Hard-wirers
Goin' after hip-hop kids and Lara Croft admirers
Take a classic format
And grind it into mince
Seth Abraham, ya ain't no Vince...

HBO is trying
To confuse the fans
Ed Lover should be asking
Himself "Who's Da Man?"
Who first foresaw
Crossing the Ring and "Raw"?
The Thrilla in Manilla
Dressed like Rocky IV?
Fly girls don't please me
It's cheesy
Shakin' stuff around the ring
Like Sherman Hemsley's Weezy
They need double the Haseem
And about half the Prince
Seth Abraham, ya ain't no Vince...

DscribeDC: And now, some thoughts from a member of the Dscribe Riddim Posse, Dub Professor Remote Control...Take it away, mon...

DPRC:

Let's give the fighters jus' a little dig-ni-ty
No more gy-ra-tions from our girl Maria D.
Or exhibitions of turntable mas-ter-y
No action figures underneath de Christ-mas tree
Leave pyrotechnics for McMahon and Teddy T.
Don't kill a dying sport wit' market stra-te-gy

DscribeDC:

The fights were quite amazing
But the show was lame
Tell Ross Greenburg you preferred it When
It Was a Game
Not MTV
Yo, G
Two hungry fighters in a war is good enough for me
Ric Flair can wear the sequins
De La Hoya would look dumb in chintz
Seth Abraham, ya ain't no Vince...

There is no excuse for the profane production of HBO’s new monthly Saturday afternoon boxing KO Nation, that is unless Larry Flint, or Hugh Heffner was the producer. Where is the Legion of Decency when we really need them?

But no Mr. Bill, Ross Greenburg, not Al Goldstein, was listed as the executive producer of KO Nation, and this question begs to be asked, “What in the names of Marilyn Chambers and Linda Lovelace, was Ross Greenburg thinking?” The whole boxing production, which was supposed to support a fine card fight headed by Paul Spadafora defending his IBF lightweight title against Mike Griffith, was one mouth-dropping, insult to the senses after another.

Rapper Mike Lover was the MC for this disgrace, which showcased writhing dancing girls, their boobs and butts shaking like freshly made jello, and their bodies bouncing to rap music mostly destined to make your hair muscles hurt. Not to mention round card girls slithering and snaking their carcasses like they were trying to entice poor Adam to eat that darn apple.

This was not supposed to be some late-night slut and slime show on cable TV that promiscuous perverts and lewd lechers use to build up their wrist muscles. This was a Saturday afternoon show where kids of all ages can tune into, their parents expecting a G rated show. As if boxing isn’t in the toilet enough in the minds of most people, now parents have to worry if Little Johnny might get impure thoughts watching the rebirth, and regurgitation of weekend daytime boxing bouts. The argument against my rant is that times have changed and what was once unacceptable, is now commonplace, and in fact expected by the masses. To that I say, fiddlesticks and golly gee I hope you’re wrong.

The bottom line is that boxing has now talking the cue from wrestling and has decided anything goes as long as the money keeps on rolling in. It’s time for respectable people and all parents to fight back. A few hundred thousand canceled HBO subscriptions may be a start to get knuckleheads like Ross “The Rogue” Greenburg and his boss Seth “The Debauching Shrimp” Abraham into the right-minded way of thinking.

If this disgrace called KO Nation takes off with favorable ratings, that tells us more about our society than righteous people want to know. Call your cable companies immediately. Tell them that HBO is now showcasing daytime material not suitable for daytime TV watchers. Tell them smut is smut, no matter how hard you trying to disguise it in the squared ring, which once was the domain of the quasi-legitimate sport called boxing.

Oh my Gawd! It’s an abomination aginst the Lord! Avert your eyes and squeeze your legs together, Maude! There’s writhing dancing girls and savage music! The country’s going to hell! Don’t look at the TV, or your moral core will be preverted....

Man, reading these outraged reactions to the debut of KO Nation is like listening to a couple of old spinsters offended by the sight of their first suffragette. Come on, people. Get a little perspective here. Ever watch MTV? Or some of Prince Hamed’s more colorful British entrances? Ever see a super-jiggly ring girl wearing (Shudder! Gasp!) a thong? To compare KO Nation’s puny attempt at trendiness to these impure excesses is tantamount to suggesting that those naughty song-and-dance numbers featuring Annette on the old Mickey Mouse Club were suitable material for the Playboy Channel.

Of course I agree that boxing, the purest and most morally correct of all sports, should be held only in basilicas, with attendance limited to penitents, pilgrims, and celibate priests, and the rites should be performed in dignified silence with perhaps an occasional touch of Handel or Bach. Let’s ignore the fact that the history of boxing is fraught with illegitmate and fraudulent and sleazy promotions, with criminal brutality and corruption. Let’s forget that many of the sport’s biggest cards are put on in Las Vegas, in casino venues all around the country, places where sex and drugs and rock and roll are a natural functtion of the environment, and then let’s get all bent out of shape because Seth Abraham and Co. used a dumbass framing device to hype a couple of decent fights. Sure, it looked stupid, and it probably won’t do much for interest in the sport overall...though I have to say that was a pretty impressive crowd. But instead of carping and wailing about what amounts to less a spiritual insult than a display of bad taste, maybe the moral arbiters among us should direct their considerable energies toward addressing the real problems facing the fight game. If they don’t care for KO Nation, maybe instead of waxing evangelical and proclaiming the advent of the end-times, they can do something useful--like come up with an alternative method of popularizing the sport among the natiion’s youth, a method more in keeping with their take on the Judao-Christian ethic. But then that would entail a bit more creativity than does knee-jerk polemic.

I consider myself a boxing purist. I prefer Jimmy Lennon Jr. to Michael Buffer, the Blue Horizon to Casino Magic, neighborhood taverns to yuppie sports bars, Don Dumphy to any of the recent chatterbox announcers, Joe Louis (or even Hedgemon Lewis) to Lennox. I’ll drive over to Salinas or Castroville to watch a couple of good young lightweights in training rather than paying 50 bucks or thereabouts to see some of the dancing bears that pass for heavyweights nowadays. I’d much rather watch televized bouts without any bells and whistles, but if a dose of glitz and rap music will help build an audience for the sport I love, hey, I’m all for it.

If KO Nation really constitutes an insult to your morality, if it makes you fumble for the ol’ rosary and causes your eyes to drift toward the flag, if you truly feel that this petty symptom of commercialism is more a threat to the American Way than drugs, guns, and a populace disaffected by and distanced from a political process grown increasingly self-serving and indifferent to their needs, then here's an idea:

Turn off your freaking TV.