If you spend a lot of time in brainstorming sessions, you will at some point have heard (and, hopefully, rolled your eyes at) some of the tiresome clichés that go along with them. “Let’s break out of our silos,” or the dreaded “think outside the box," for example. And then there’s the worst of them all: “There are no bad ideas.”
Oh, but there are. So, so very many, often advanced in the belief that they are silo-breaking, outside-the-box thinking good ideas. I could list any number of bad ideas that are prevalent in this, the Age of Idiocracy (AKA the dumbest of times), but there are plenty enough examples in the world of boxing alone.
Being a successful boxing promoter is hard, but the fundamental concept is simple: put evenly matched fighters with styles that mesh in a ring and see what happens. That just isn’t enough for some folks, though, so periodically up pops an idea that really should never have made it out of the brainstorm session. I’m not even talking George Foreman facing five guys in one day, or a 58-year-old with recent health scares shuffling sadly around the ring. I mean, really bad ideas.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present Weed Boxing.
Weed Boxing is, apparently, an event that takes place in Phuket, Thailand. It “almost like real boxing” (first red flag) except that “before the fight, you have to take a puff, and the ring is set up by a pool, so you can take a dip after the bout."
Despite the fact that I dump on it on a regular basis, I basically like boxing, or else I wouldn’t write about it. I like weed, too. I like weed much more than I like boxing, in fact. But that doesn’t mean that I think the two should go together (except when consuming one makes it easier to stay up past my bedtime and watch the other). While acknowledging when I get stoned, I like to watch cartoons or listen to '70s music. Getting high and swapping punches just feels … unwise.
(To be fair, Weed Boxing insists that taking a pre-fight puff is encouraged, not mandated.)
Anyhoo, earlier in June there was a Weed Boxing event. I’ll be honest: I have no idea if this was the first, the 10th or the only such card. But at some point during it, Russian fighter Ivan Parshikov won his bantamweight bout and climbed the corner to celebrate.
So far, so good. But notwithstanding my pro-weed stance, I recognize that consuming it can lead to bad decisions. In my case, that normally involves eating pizza at midnight. But Parshikov’s brain freeze was very nearly so very much worse. As he climbed the corner, he grabbed a light fixture to steady himself. At which point, I refer you back to the fact that the ring was adjacent to (or, according to some reports, encircled by) a swimming pool.
There was a pop and a flash, and an electrocuted Parshikov tumbled head first on to the ring apron. Astonishingly, he didn’t hurt himself in the fall and, within moments, was alert enough to take a plunge in the pool. He was even able to joke about the whole episode later on his Instagram page.
Somewhere, an “influencer” boxing promoter is watching, taking notes and coming up with a very bad idea.
