By Bob Markus

It's just as well A.J. Liebling is not around to see what they've done to his "sweet science." That is the term the celebrated New Yorker writer gave to boxing, the sport he chronicalled with unparalleled pananche and passion. Certainly, there are those, and they are likely in the majority, who see nothing sweet about two men trying to knock each other senseless. But they proably never saw Sugar Ray Robinson take out Bobo Olson with a single, pure, devastating left hook or Muhammad Ali bait George Foreman into a deadly trap before dropping him like a stone in the middle of an African night.

Boxing may be cruel and politically incorrect, but there are those who love it, and I am one of them, although if you tell me I should be ashamed of myself Iwill not quarrel. Boxing can be brutal and it can be bloody, as I've learned sitting at ringside and recoiling from the spatters on the canvas in front of me. But it can be noble in its own way and I don't see how anyone could have sat through the three Ali-Frazier classics without feeling a deep admiration for both fighters. And it's the only sport I know where the combatants, no matter the mayhem they have just wrought on one another, routinely embrace at the end of the contest.

I've watched boxing since the heyday of the first Sugar Ray--Robinson (there was also a Sugar Ray Costner in that era)--and the two real life Rockys--Marciano and Graziano--and I've watched it through the era of Ali and the nouveau Sugar Ray--Leonard. Whenever I see boxing scheduled on TV I try to watch it, even if I don't know the fighters. And increasingly I don't.

But I do know this: that boxing as I know it and as Liebling knew it, is dangerously close to losing its significance. It is starting to look a lot like professional wrestling, with its phony posturing and costumes by Edith Head. Worse yet, with the burgeoning popularity of mixed martial arts, boxing is heading down the path to irrelevance.

Turn on a fight show these days and you're likely to find two men kicking each other in the shins, groin, or head and grovelling on the canvas like oldtime wrestlers. Strangler Lewis comes to mind. That's what I saw over the week-end when CBS presented a mixed martial arts card for the first time on network television. Given the taste of the American public for reality-based schlock, I'm sure it was the first of many.

Apparently there are few, if any, rules in MMA bouts. The contestants wear four ounce gloves, compared to the standard eight ounces for boxing matches, and they are open at the ends to provide the use of fingers when there is dirty work to be done on the mat. One bout was stopped because of an accidental finger poke to the eye. "That was fun," said Scott Smith, the recipient of the wayward digit, "but I wanted to continue. I probably would have gotten knocked out, but I'd rather be knocked out than have it end like that."

The main drawing card was a 34-year-old formerly homeless man named Kimbo Slice, not his real name, who got his start in street fights that were shown on the internet. In fact, he had had only two professional bouts but was a big betting favorite because, like Big Brown, the race horse, he had blitzed his opponents, neither of his bouts lasting as long as 45 seconds. But Kimbo found out that it takes more than a paralysing punch to be champion in this sport and it wasn't until the third and final round--rounds are five minutes each--that he finally dispatched veteran James "Colossus" Thompson. For the first two rounds Thompson had taken Kimbo to the mat and nearly to the cleaners.

Even if boxing survives the challenge of MMA, it appears headed in the same direction. Every boxer these days must have a nickname and a gimmick and every ring announcer must introduce both men as if they were Sultans of Bahrain. That started, of course, with Michael Buffer, whose clarion call of "Let's get ready to ruuuuumble" has become a cliche. Yet the crowd loves it.

The last real boxing I saw was a couple of weeks ago when one of the networks televised a card from England. In the first bout Paulie "Magic Man"Malignaggi was defending his version of the welterweight title against Lovemore "Black Panther" N'Dou, from whom he had won it. Malignaggi entered the ring wearing a full face blue mask and hair down to his ankles. He lost the first round because his hair kept getting in his eyes, so his cornermen used tape to tie it in a ponytail. That didn't work for very long, however, and the referee twice had to stop the bout while Malignaggi had his coiffure adjusted. About midway through the bout one of the cornermen showed a deft touch with a pair of scissors and gave his fighter a trim.

The main event was notable for the costumes the two combatants wore into the ring. Ricky Hatton wore electric blue shorts that came down to midcalf like the ones Michgan's Fab Five popularized. His opponent, Juan Lascano, wore a red outfit topped by a broad-brimmed sombrero that made him look like a member of a Mariachi band.

So this is what boxing is coming to. The sweet science is beginning to turn a little sour. And where will it all end? The logical train of progression would seem to end in fights to the death in packed stadiums filled with blood thirsty fanactics rendering split decisions on the fate of any survivors. But, hey, that's already been done, hasn't it?