Fighting Words — Vinny Pazienza and the long-standing issues with hall of fame voting

This isn’t really about Vinny Pazienza, but in a way it has to be. Because it is Pazienza’s selection into the International Boxing Hall of Fame that has once again underscored the long-standing issues with who votes and how, with how the voting itself is conducted, and who winds up inducted in Canastota as a result.

Pazienza was one of six modern boxers, three of them men and the other three women, announced for the new class of inductees. He, along with Manny Pacquiao, Michael Nunn, Yessica Chavez, Anne Sophie Mathis and Mary Jo Sanders, will be honored at the IBHOF’s annual celebration in early June 2025.

Pazienza fought from 1983 until 2004, starting as a lightweight and finishing in and around the super-middleweight division. He went 50-10 with 30 knockouts and won two world titles, holding the IBF lightweight belt from 1987 into 1988 and the WBA junior-middleweight belt from 1991 to 1992.

He never had a single successful title defense. He never defeated any other hall-of-fame fighters. Pazienza went 2-5 in world title fights — 2-6 if you are one of the few who consider the WBO belt to have been a world title when Hector Camacho Snr held it. 

Pazienza beat Greg Haugen for the IBF title at 135 and then lost it back to Haugen eight months later in their rematch. He stopped Gilbert Dele for the WBA title at 154 and then vacated it a year later, sidelined for much of that reign by injuries suffered in a car crash. Otherwise, Pazienza also lost to the junior-welterweight titleholder Roger Mayweather in 1988, Camacho at junior welterweight in 1990, junior-welterweight titleholder Loreto Garza in 1990, super-middleweight titleholder Roy Jones Jnr in 1995 and super-middleweight titleholder Eric Lucas in 2002.

And according to the boxing writer and historian Cliff Rold, Pazienza didn’t even fare well against opponents ranked in the top 10 by the main boxing magazines of his era: The Ring, KO Magazine, Boxing Illustrated and Boxing Digest. 

He was 4-7 overall against them. The other two wins not mentioned were a decision in 1990 over Haugen in a rubber match when neither had a title, and a stoppage in 1996 of Dana Rosenblatt. The seventh defeat was against Herol Graham at super middleweight in 1997.

There are those who argue that induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame shouldn’t be based solely on what fighters you beat, how many world titles you held, and for how long.

“It’s a hall of FAME, not a hall of pound-for-pound,” posted Lou DiBella, the former network executive turned promoter who himself is enshrined in Canastota in the non-participant category. “Vinny Paz was a warrior spirit, a comeback kid, and a legend.”

This is a misstatement of what halls of fame are. Yes, the criteria for the IBHOF’s modern category says “Voting shall be based upon a boxer’s achievements in the ring as a professional boxer”. Yes, that leaves a gray area for those who want a semantic argument about the meaning of “achievements”. But that semantic argument isn’t necessary. Sports hall of fame voting has always been about honoring the best of the best. It’s an exclusive club, but that doesn’t mean others are excluded from recognition elsewhere. That’s because halls of fame have always also been able to spotlight the many other notable names and moments within their museum section.

That was the case I made 12 years ago, when I wrote about why one of my favorite fighters ever, Arturo Gatti, did not belong in the IBHOF.

“A boxer can be commemorated in the Hall of Fame without being inducted into it. The building in the small Upstate New York town of Canastota includes photos and trunks and gloves and other boxing memorabilia from a number of fighters and a number of fights. Just as baseball’s hall of fame in Cooperstown includes various items from history — while reserving the greatest honors for the greatest players — so, too, does the International Boxing Hall of Fame. The memories of Arturo Gatti can adorn the walls in Canastota without placing a plaque alongside the best boxers in history.”

Gatti wound up being inducted anyway. I can’t say for certain that I was in the minority on him, but Gatti was one of the top vote-getters on his first ballot, entering posthumously in the 2013 class.

Popularity shouldn’t matter. Plenty of non-American fighters drew huge audiences in their home countries but haven’t gotten the same honor as Gatti and Pazienza. Tim Tebow isn’t going to end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Entertainment shouldn’t matter either. If it did, maybe more of this year’s voters would have gone with the more deserving Israel Vazquez, who was in the fight of the year in 2007 and 2008 and had other classic battles before then. Oh, and Vazquez beat far better fighters than Pazienza did, won more world-title fights, and lasted longer with those belts.

(Those who complain about Sylvester Stallone being in the IBHOF tend to gloss over the fact that he’s in the “Observer” category, which recognizes journalists, publishers, writers, historians, photographers and artists.)

And even if popularity and entertainment did matter? Rold says Pazienza doesn’t meet those thresholds either.

“Pazienza was in no fights of the year,” Rold told me. “He was never in a truly classic fight. What memorable fight do people talk about with Vinny Pazienza? The Haugen fights were OK. The Gilbert Dele fight was OK. But he was never in a genuine classic. I know Pazienza sold tickets, but he was not one of the top attractions in the sport. He was not an HBO or Showtime headline guy. He doesn’t pass the fame metric, if that’s what one bases this on. Yeah, they made a movie of his life. The movie was a flop. If movie crossover is a thing, Antonio Tarver [who also was on this year’s ballot but wasn’t voted in] was in one that people actually watched. It’s a head-scratching pick.”

It’s not the first head-scratcher. Gatti was one of the more recent. Barry McGuigan preceded him. It’s happened often enough that these words have come from me before: “The bar should remain high and not be lowered by past inductees.”

And yet it keeps happening.

It keeps happening because the International Boxing Hall of Fame has no minimum standard, unlike the Baseball Hall of Fame, which requires players to be selected by at least 75% of the voters in order to be inducted. Not in boxing, not for a hall of fame and a small town that thrives during induction weekend — a wonderful event everyone should attend at least once — and receives significant tourism revenue. 

Ed Brophy, the director of the IBHOF, says that’s not a factor.

“There certainly are funds that are needed to operate a facility like the hall of fame, but that has no reflection on the induction process,” Brophy told BoxingScene’s Eric Raskin earlier this year. “The majority of the needed fundraising is done with different methods apart from the induction weekend. The induction weekend is the celebration. The funding is totally separate and apart from what the purpose of the Hall of Fame is — the purpose is to honor those who have excelled.”

But voting is done by, well… people like me. Full members of the Boxing Writers Association of America receive IBHOF voting privileges. So do a number of other people. What number? We don’t know. What people? We don’t know.

There’s no transparency. 

All the IBHOF says is “an international panel of boxing historians cast votes. Voters from Japan, England, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Germany, Puerto Rico and the United States are among those who participate in the election process”.

We don’t see vote totals. We have no idea if Pacquiao was, say, selected on everyone’s ballot while each voter’s remaining four picks were spread between so many different names that Pazienza somehow got in with a plurality, rather than a majority.

Although not all BWAA members are American, most of us are. As I wrote after Gatti was selected: “It should come as no surprise that this group of boxing writers — some of whom had to be persuaded to consider international wars such as Mahyar Monshipour vs Somsak Sithchatchawal and Akira Yaegashi vs Pornsawan Porpramook as past fight-of-the-year candidates — would lean towards American boxers that they had seen.”

I’ve loved the IBHOF ever since my first visit in 2007, when Brophy, not even knowing I was a boxing writer, walked me around the museum on a cold winter day. I’ve enjoyed each of our conversations since. It took me too long to return to Canastota, another 15 years, when I experienced my first induction weekend in 2022, the year that three classes were enshrined due to cancellations caused by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

Pazienza’s recognition won’t permanently damage the IBHOF’s stature or credibility. It will survive, just as it did after the inductions of Gatti, McGuigan, Ingemar Johannson and other names that some have criticized. It has survived the induction in 2021 of Jackie Tonawanda, who may never have actually accomplished what she and the IBHOF said she accomplished.

But this isn’t really about Vinny Pazienza. This isn’t the first time. It needs to be the last time, though. We can criticize what we love and love what we criticize, all because we want only the best for it — and only the best in it.

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.