Individual-hand poker is essentially extinct, as well. To an absurd degree: we watched a recent movie that had people playing poker in the 1940s, and the producer had them playing THE, which was an obscure variant until the 90s or later. Then came an episode of Blue Bloods where the adults were playing regular 5-card… but that’s a show that revels in the oldest, most traditional options it can find.
I think we’re stretching the definition of “sport” a bit by including poker (though I’m a fan.)
True, but that was the usual bitching about the quality of the sport. When Ali and Frazier fought for a previously unheard-of $5 million purse, nobody was saying the sport was declining in popularity.
And apparently it did. But so what? This site says there were just 258 locations where one could have watched the Clay-Liston rematch on closed-circuit TV, and 515,000 people watched the fight at those locations. How many locations were there where one could watch the Mayweather-Canelo match on PPV? Probably the living rooms of most people with cable connections. So we’ve got a serious apples-and-oranges problem with this comparison.
And that’s without even asking whether we’re talking just U.S. numbers for the PPV on Mayweather-Canelo, or whether that’s international.
What it comes down to is, I can guarantee you that most people in the U.S. knew who Liston and Clay/Ali were, at the time. What fraction of Americans have heard of Mayweather or Canelo?
The “sport” of THE, televised on sports channels. killed the more amateur sport of individual-hand poker. I’m not the one who decided it was a “sport” in either case, and I was tagging on to a comment about forms of billiards being a sport… which is a similar stretch.
If we’re only going to talk about the five or six sports that involve sweat, muscle and wide-scale TV coverage, the thread has gone on far too long. 
Mayweather’s extremely famous. Using the (admittedly dubious standard) of this Bleacher Report slideshow, he’s the fourth most “powerful” athlete in the world. He’s certainly not Ali, but he might be in the same bracket as Sonny Liston.
ETA: “Televised on sports channels” is not really indicative of anything. ESPN also carries commercials for hemmorhoid cream. Billiards is at least arguably a sport in the sense that it is a game requiring physical skill. Poker is not, except in the extremely remote sense that you might have to stay awake late during a tournament.
Here’s the link I forgot to include for the Clay-Liston closed-circuit TV numbers.
‘Extremely famous,’ where??
Sounds like it was a widely watched bout in Mexico, for instance. This would support one’s argument that boxing is still a major sport in Mexico. I wouldn’t disagree.
Everywhere. He’s unquestionably the most famous active boxer in the world. Hell, he’s the highest-paid sportsman in the world of any kind. There are only 15 athletes in any sport with more Twitter followers, and only 177 people.
???
As **RNATB **stated, he’s famous everywhere …for his actions in and outside of the ring. I’m not a huge fan of Mayweather but the guy has been a phenom since turning pro after the 1996 Olympics.
He’s arguable the best fighter… EVER!
I’m pretty sure bear baiting isn’t what it used to be.
Probably even less than it was a year and a half ago.
Bah, its not like walking for days on end!
According to Real Sports on HBO golf has been declining lately.
Yeah there are abandoned courses all over America. However the game is in no danger of dying.
One suspects golf courses were being born aplenty in the free credit years up to 2007 and crashed hard when the realities of borrowing money changed the economy. However, the core of the golfing market’s not going anywhere.
The real shame of the new Forza is that it was released almost totally unfinished and it has remained that way. Fantastic game from a visual, aural, and technological standpoint, but woefully short on tracks and vehicles. They didn’t even ship it with the Nurburgring, which is nothing short of ironic considering how much they talked about it in the Forzavista descriptions and race series intros. They also left out the Auction House.
Also, the hopper system is a great way to get into races, but you can’t kick anyone out when they start griefing the room. Invariably you’ll find someone who wrecks people for laughs or someone who takes great offense to any sort of contact and will pursue you until you leave the hopper.
5 had so much potential. Too bad it was unrealized. 4 is an all-around better game. Forza Horizon 2 is amazing, don’t miss out on that. Also, to enhance your bank account and garage make sure you get Forza Rewards. Once a month they drop money and/or cars on you.
Regarding boxing…purely from where I sit, it’s hard to argue that boxing, in the US at least, isn’t a dying sport, and dying rapidly at that.
- I hardly ever see it mentioned on the ESPN highlights shows, which I don’t watch every day by any means but seems to be ignored completely whenever I DO see it.
- Boxing’s almost never reported on in my local newspaper.
- The Olympics coverage of boxing as a main attraction is just about nonexistent.
- In my teaching career, I have never heard a kid talk about a boxer or a boxing match. Never. And I do hear a lot about sports in general.
- And there’s not a single person I know who I can point to and say, “There goes a boxing fan.” (Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t any, or that my circle of acquaintances is typical of the US, but it’s a data point.)
And it wasn’t always this way. I was in grade school for Ali-Frazier, and I was very well aware of it–it was something the sports fans in my class talked about. Ali certainly transcended boxing, probably transcended sport. Even Mike Tyson did that to some degree. Evander Holyfield–that’s a name I remember. Mayweather? Nope. Means nothing to me. I might not have been able to tell you anything at all about him before I read this thread, including that he is a boxer.
You’re right, though, that the decline is a little harder to prove. I saw a survey–can’t find it now, sorry–that indicated that 11% of Americans were enthusiastic boxing fans. That’s a lot less than basketball, even more less than baseball, way less than football, but not that far off from tennis, golf, or the NHL or NASCAR. I bet that in the early seventies the numbers for boxing would’ve dwarfed the numbers for NASCAR or hockey, probably would’ve outranked tennis and golf as spectator sports too. Still, 11% is a lot of people.
Then again, the popularity of boxing seems to be highest among blacks and Hispanics (see Boxing's future: Can Mayweather's star be replaced?) and that’s not exactly a coveted demographic. That doesn;t help.
And then *again *again, according to the article one of boxing’s bigwigs admits “Boxing is not growing in the United States,” which is telling. And another source says “People were ready to pull the plug on boxing. But we’re alive.” Not strong words of support.
The article goes on to distinguish the US from other markets:
“Globally, boxing is anything but banished to a neutral corner. From audience and sponsor perspectives, the sport remains immensely popular in other corners of the world, including Spanish-speaking countries, Europe and Canada.”
Anyway, I think this is the crux of it. And so it’s not accurate to say that Mayweather is famous “everywhere.” His popularity–and I’m not denying that he’s popular–is based much more on fans outside the US than on fans inside it. Oh, he’d make a good living if boxing only existed in the US. It’s certainly not dead yet, or even on life support. But he’d make nothing like what he does with the whole world at his disposal.
George Foreman transcended boxing AND grills!
Yes and no- it’s certainly easy to see big problems in American golf. There are a lot of golf courses closing down, and Dick’s Sporting Goods dropped a lot of their golf pros.
On the other hand, I’m not sure if that’s a sign of real decline or just a sign that a LOT of people anticipated a huge boom in golf (partly because of Tiger Woods) that just didn’t happen.
In a few years, we’ll have a better idea of what’s actually happened in golf. I think it will still remain the sizable niche sport it’s always been. I just think a large percentage of the casual viewers and the casual players is dropping off as Tiger fades away.
I am a member of a country club. According to information it has disseminated, golf peaked in the US in 2000. Since then, the number of rounds played has fallen by 21% Our club had 77% of members with golf membership in 1996 and is now down to about 50% Some of that is caused by expanding non-golf facilities, thereby attracting more non-golf players, but the club is planning its future on the assumption that not as many people will play golf as previously. However, as more boomers retire, the trend could slow or reverse.