Some Shadow Boxing

After yesterday’s curt editorial I want to go light today.

There are some oddities in the 2011 SportsKings Ringside Round 2 boxing release that had me confused about some decisions about specific cards and their inclusion in the set.

When I saw a couple Arturo Gatti memorabilia cards with an image of a shadow boxer I was initially confused. Was it just a bad design choice by SpoortKings/ITG, was there a mistake or was this done with intent? I looked to see if all of the memorabilia cards on this specific insert were all with shadow boxers, but it was just the Gatti so it wasn’t a bad design choice. I looked in to other cards in the set and found a couple more cards with shadow boxers instead of the fighter’s image, including Julio Cesar Chavez, which led me to believe this was done with intent.

I tried to find any information about why some cards had fighter images and some were shadow boxers and I came up with the theory that Dr. Price was not able to work out a deal with the fighters, or in the case of Gatti, his family, to include their likeness on the cards but the set was probably already in production, so he had to make a last-minute decision to just go with a shadow boxer on the relic cards and I am willing to bet they were also in the base set but removed off of the checklist.

I am sure this wasn’t how the process was begun, contracts probably weren’t completed, and the set was put in motion. Not ideal, but I would be satisfied with one of these cards if I collected the boxer.