An understanding of how matches are made, or why they can't be made, is one of those things that separates serious fight fans from people who like to occasionally pay a stiff cover fee at a sports bar to watch and gamble on a big boxing match. This list of factors is just the tip of the iceberg, as it only counts relatively licit issues, leaving out all the really dirty laundry for which the boxing business has always been notorious.

Inside boxing is hard for most of us to understand. It's way more complicated than I realized.