By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Regularly the headlines reaffirm what we've long taken as fact about professional boxing, that it is thick with thieves and choked with charlatans and cheats.

It is an industry that has gotten so many black eyes it is almost inconceivable any more remain to be blackened or bloodied.

So when you come across someone who has managed to not only wade through the slime without disappearing in it but also made some positive contributions along the way, it is worth noting. More so when that person has done it going on a quarter-century now.

As such, the good guys' corner will be a little emptier here and the sport a little poorer when Mike Machado retires in December after 25 years as the executive secretary of the Hawai'i State Boxing Commission. Boxers, referees, promoters and fans will have lost a friend when he steps down at age 63.

That's too bad because boxing can use all the help and steady-handed caretakers it can get. And the ranks of old-timers Pete Jhun, Bobby Lee, Herbert Minn, Al Silva, to name too few, are already exceedingly thin.

Officially, Machado is the point man for the state's regulation of the professional boxing industry. The guy who takes political appointees by the hand to make sure that contracts are signed, fighters paid, credible shows take place and scandals avoided.

Because even in the best of times — which these aren't — it doesn't require a full-time position to watch over it, Machado runs other regulatory boards and commissions for the state. But none of them have been quite taken to heart or administered from the heart the way boxing was.

Like his predecessor as executive secretary, Lee, Machado has kept a skeptical and close eye on the industry. But he's also had a patience beyond the job in working with promoters and in dispensing both wise and gratis counsel.

Here's somebody who has gone extra rounds, certainly well beyond what the job description asks, to watch out for the welfare of boxers, prelim fighters and champions alike. He's helped them to get fights and ratings. He's kept dozens from being over-matched or taken advantage of.

Less well-known is that he's helped look out for some down and out fighters well after their careers. He's helped put together funerals and kept old-timers from being forgotten. Not because it is in the rules and regulations but because, well, that's just the way he operates.

The boxing business is dying here, its pulse growing more faint by the year for a lot of reasons. It is coming to the point where pretty soon either former Olympian Brian Viloria's rise rescues it or they might as well call in someone to administer last rites.

But it likely would have already expired, or worse, dissolved into scandal if not for the contributions of Machado.