Back in February, after 24 years as a commissioner for the Arizona Commission on Boxing and MMA, Joe Pennington retired.
His time on the commission began before most people even knew about MMA, or “mixed martial arts.” Pennington served under five governors during his tenure, during which he was particularly focused on strengthening safety regulations for boxers and MMA combatants.
Shortly after his retirement, Pennington joined The Show to talk about how he found his love for boxing, and how the sport has evolved over the course of his life as both fan and fighter.
Full conversation
JOE PENNINGTON: My bedtime was at 8 o'clock, except on Friday night, and my father would let me stay up and watch the Friday Night Fights. The Friday Night Fights with him. That’s how I began to enjoy boxing.
SAM DINGMAN: Wow, and were you interested in becoming a fighter yourself?
PENNINGTON: Well, in fact I did. In college, I was the Golden Gloves light heavyweight champion in Memphis. But that was only for a year. I had to go on and try to complete my studies and not do all the training required to be a boxer.
DINGMAN: Well, when you stepped into the ring after, you know, spending your youth watching it, what did you find about learning how to actually do it?
PENNINGTON: Actually, in the dorm where I was living, the guy across the hall in the room across the hall had been a Golden Gloves champion in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He would train me. We would go through sparring, etc. And in fact, the hardest I’ve ever been hit was by him with a left hook. 134 pound guy, and I saw stars like you would not believe. Didn’t go down.
DINGMAN: That’s, I think if I got hit like that once, I would never touch a boxing glove again.
PENNINGTON: Well, I had to prove that I could endure it.
DINGMAN: So what kept you interested in it even after you stopped fighting in earnest?
PENNINGTON: Whenever VCRs came out, a lot of guys bought the VCR so they could watch blue movies. And I bought the VCR so I could tape boxing matches. And now, I’ve consolidated it down to where they’re all on DVDs, but I’ve got 98 DVDs that are nothing but championship boxing matches with their one-minute intermission or breaks between rounds edited out.
DINGMAN: Wow. You know, you’re making me think about sometimes you’ll hear, you know, film buffs talk about how they go back and watch Coen brothers movies over and over again, or Robert Altman movies over and over again, because every time they watch them, they see something new. Is that what it’s like watching fights for you?
PENNINGTON: Oh yeah.
DINGMAN: What are the kinds of things you catch on a repeat viewing that you might not have seen the first time?
PENNINGTON: Well, I mean, for example, Lomachenko was a lightweight, and has some remarkable footwork. He was Ukranian and his dad said that before he can learn to fight, he had to learn to dance. And so yeah, Ukrainian folk music, folk dances, and his footwork is just incredible.
DINGMAN: Wow. So it seems to me, and please tell me if I’m wrong, that there has always been this combination of factors around boxing culture. One is the elegance of it. You know, you mentioned that Ukranian fighter who was trained as a dancer, the idea that there was this real, craft and formality to it.
But then there’s also been, you know, lots of corruption and brutality over the years. And now there’s folks like Jake Paul who some people feel like has become a fighter just kind of as a stunt. But it’s also brought a lot of new attention to the sport. What do you make of all that?
PENNINGTON: Focusing on Jake Paul and others, that is really a sports entertainment type of event. I consider it more like professional wrestling. It’s not a totally staged event, but it’s not hard-core competition.
If I put Jake Paul in the ring, or if somebody put Jake Paul in the ring with a current light heavyweight or cruiserweight contender, I don’t think that Jake Paul would last very long.
DINGMAN: You think he might be seeing stars like you did?
PENNINGTON: Yeah, I think he might be.
DINGMAN: What about mixed martial arts, it sounds like you have some feelings about that.
PENNINGTON: Oh yeah, I’ve gained a great deal of respect for the combatants in mixed martial arts.
DINGMAN: Do you think of it as a similar skill set to boxing, or do you see it as kind of a different way of competing physically altogether? I mean, just to offer a very rudimentary observation, I could imagine somebody who’s like a real boxing nerd thinking, well, in boxing you’re only allowed to use your fists. Whereas with mixed martial arts, everything’s on the table.
So you mentioned, you know, gaining respect for it. What has that journey been for you?
PENNINGTON: Well, at first, the fighters weren't that good. I mean, you know, it’s any sport. You start out with a young, a new sport. The early participants in pickleball would go up, gently hit the ball over the net and blah, blah, blah, just like you see back in the early days of tennis. Well, today they hit that ball pretty hard. So, you know, running.
I recall when the 4 minute mile was finally broken and how that was such a marvelous event. Well, how many 4 minute miles have been run since that time? High school people are running almost 4 minute miles. It's just the improvement in the sport over time as we learn what the human body and brain are capable of doing.
DINGMAN: Well so now you've, you've retired Joe and I, you mentioned having this, this huge collection of DVDs that I'm imagining you'll have a little bit more time available to go back and revisit.
If you had to pick one fight out of that collection that you feel like you go back to more than any other. Could you say which one that is?
PENNINGTON: Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr. A couple of years ago. Errol Spence Jr. had three belts, welterweight belts. Crawford had one. And Crawford made him look like a competitor, not a champion.
It was just incredible. I mean, the difference in technique, the difference in speed, and the total domination that Crawford showed over Errol Spence just really reinforced to me that Crawford is probably one of the best boxers that the country has ever seen.
And he'll be fighting Canelo Alvarez. I think it's in August–with quite a bit of weight difference. One will have to come down, the other will go up. But that's a big, big money fight.
DINGMAN: And I take it you'll be watching, as a fan.
PENINGTON: As a fan I’ll be watching, you bet.
