On the Ropes

Squared off with U.S. attorneys intent on proving it an illegal monopoly, the International Boxing Club (James D. Norris, Pres.) caught a legal haymaker. Boxing may be a sport, decided Manhattan's Federal Judge Sylvester J. Ryan last week, but it is also a big and far from benevolent business, and promotion of championship bouts is monopolized by the I.B.C. in violation of the Sherman antitrust laws.

The I.B.C. controls most of the country's biggest fight arenas from Manhattan's Madison Square Garden to the Chicago Stadium and Detroit's Olympia Arena. It holds exclusive contracts with almost all the top fighters. During the period of the Government's complaint (1949-53), it controlled the promotion of 36 of the 44 U.S.-staged championship fights. In their insistence on cornering championship bouts, concluded Judge Ryan, Norris and his pals "engaged in a combination and conspiracy . . . and were parties to contracts, agreements, arrangements and understandings in unreasonable restraint of [interstate commerce]."

The I.B.C. still has its appeal, but Ryan's ruling fell inexorably into a fast-forming pattern of legal reasoning that portends basic changes in the structure of big-time sport. Only the week before, the Supreme Court had decided that professional football is subject to antitrust laws (TIME, March 11) and suggested that even big-league baseball is no longer immune.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.