Of all the great comebacks in boxing, few rival the current attempt by a faded heavy hitter named the Ring. Born in New York in 1922, the country’s oldest sports magazine swaggered around the sweet science for five decades before losing its punch and business reflexes. Now after 30 years of backpedaling, the self-styled “Bible of boxing” exudes the sweet promise of an old-time fight card. It also has ringside observers who question its credibility.
    
Over the last 85 years, the Ring has periodically ducked conflict-of-interest accusations. At the outset, prizefighters’ monthly ratings were compiled by co-founder Tex Rickard, the first promoter ever to put together a million-dollar card. "Imagine a promoter rating his own fighters!" says boxing historian Bert Sugar, the Ring’s editor and publisher from 1979 to 1984.

Rickard’s partner, New York Telegraph sports editor Nat Fleischer, bought him out in 1925 and installed a less suspect system that was based on the votes of an independent panel. When Fleischer died, in 1972, the magazine continued under the direction of his son-in-law, Nat Loubet. But its reputation fell again following a nationally televised tournament in 1977. A Sports Illustrated exposé revealed that the title’s ratings and record book had been changed to help promoters. "If the Ring is the Bible of boxing," Sugar cracked, "the sport needs a New Testament."

The latest theological controversy at the Ring involves Sports & Entertainment Publications, which, in September, purchased the ailing monthly along with three sister publications—K.O., World Boxing, and Pro Wrestling Illustrated—from Kappa Publishing Group. According to industry insiders, the price was about $7 million.
    
Sports & Entertainment Publications is a subsidiary of Golden Boy Enterprises, the widely diversified promotional company run by Oscar De La Hoya, the Ring’s third-ranked junior middleweight. Among De La Hoya’s equity partners with minority stakes are Bernard Hopkins, the magazine’s light-heavyweight champ, and Sugar Shane Mosley, its No. 3 welterweight.
    
Although De La Hoya has promised to keep his mitts off editorial content, critics have been jabbing away at the redesign’s integrity.

"If you’re a rival company to Golden Boy, would you want the magazine’s ratings being used by television networks to determine what they buy?” promoter Lou DiBella has said. "And if I owned Ring, and I’m a promoter, I certainly would go to a fighter and say, 'Look, I own Ring magazine.' " A prominent matchmaker asks, "How do you pay attention to Ring’s ratings when guys in the ratings own the magazine?"

Managing editor Joe Santoliquito counters that De La Hoya has kept his word. "So far, Golden Boy has had a laissez-faire attitude toward us and not interfered," he says. "Our reputation depends on fairness, and we were, we are, and we will continue to be the most honest ranker of fighters in the business."

De La Hoya, he says, almost certainly saved the monthly from being knocked out. "I don’t know if we would have stopped publishing tomorrow or 10 years from now," Santoliquito says. "But we were not in great shape."

The title’s popularity peaked in the 1970s, reportedly reaching a circulation of more than 500,000, during Muhammad Ali’s reign. But boxing was becoming a niche sport, and the Ring a niche publication. By the time the 1977 ratings scandal hit, circulation was down to 135,000. Two years later, Loubet sold the monthly for $1 million to a consortium headed by Sugar and former New York Knicks forward Dave DeBusschere. The Ring has been on the financial ropes pretty much ever since.
    
In 1984, with the Ring $1.3 million in debt, Sugar was forced out, and the magazine stopped publishing. "There’s a malaise in boxing today,” Sugar said at the time, "and the Ring may be its first fatality."

The title was briefly resuscitated, only to shut down again in 1989. Revived again, it staggered around like a punched-up pug before Kappa, the largest publisher of puzzle books in the United States, took control in 1992. Kappa treated the Ring as if it were a suburban shopper.

Then De La Hoya stepped into the ring with the Ring.

Golden Boy hopes to restore the publication to eminence and increase its measly online presence. There’s talk of partnering with Yahoo to launch a boxing portal that would stream video of major bouts. An advertising agency has been hired. The plan is to cross-promote the Ring with some of the mainstream sponsors De La Hoya has brought to the sport, including Southwest Airlines and Tecate beer.

It’s unclear whether Golden Boy is more interested in the magazine itself or in the well-established brand, which Kappa never really tried to license or expand.

"It may be that our name still has cachet," Santoliquito concedes.

The spinoffs De La Hoya is considering range from sportswear to sporting goods. In contrast, Everlast has attached its name to cosmetics, jewelry, watches, nutrition bars, fragrances—and even an Everlast condom.

With all the talk of turning the Ring into a market leader, at least one promoter sees cracks forming in the journalistic firewall between Golden Boy and the magazine’s editorial staff. The Ring logo, the promoter notes, now appears on the mats used in the televised bouts that Golden Boy promotes. "That’s more than a little over the line," the promoter says.

He also points out that the Ring didn’t publish any of the racy photographs of De La Hoya that ran last September in the New York tabloids. The snapshots, which appear to show the 34-year-old athlete wearing heels, a wig, and a fishnet bodysuit, were taken by a stripper in a Philadelphia hotel room.

"If Don King were photographed in lingerie, don’t you think the picture would appear in the Ring?” the promoter asks. "The fact that the Ring wouldn’t show Oscar in drag tells me everything I need to know about the magazine."

To its credit, the Ring did run two news items about the photos, one of which detailed a lawsuit the stripper filed against De La Hoya, accusing him of "fraud, defamation, and infliction of emotional distress." The plaintiff has since signed an affidavit stating that the images had been “altered” by an unnamed third party, who stole them from her camera.

"Those shots were obviously doctored," Santoliquito says. "No way the legs in those fishnets were Oscar’s. I’ve seen his, and they’re much hairier."