Is boxing in serious trouble. The last few years they have touted the greatest pound for pound fighters and they have shown themselves to be runners. Roy Jones made very boring fights by jumping in punching once or twice and then running. Jermaine Taylor, and Mayweather are doing the same. I understand the thought on a personal level. Get big paydays and don’t get hurt. But, are they damaging the sport?
Boxing is a difficult sport for fighters to damage, IMO. It is absolutely corrupt already.
Salon thinks so, but for a lot of reasons:
The DelaHoya vs Mayweather fight may have been the all time biggest gross. It made more than any fight ever,but was dull. They contribute to the demise.
Don King should be jailed as a public service.
By the time King came along, boxing was already declining. Its peak was in the 30s and 40s, and it kept being important in the 50s due to TV and the 60s due to Muhammed Ali. But it long ago stopped being relevant. Salon mentions the major factors, but another is that boxing went pay-per-view very early, meaning that only established fans would watch. New fans (in the US, at least) just aren’t developing (yes, I’m sure there are a few, but not enough to bring the sports back).
In addition, the internationalization of the sport has caused fans to move on.
How to turn it around? It’s probably too late, but the best option would be to have a single (and non-corrupt) governing body that sets who boxes who.
There should be boxing programs for young people (but many of the social class who went into boxing are more likely to be interested in something like basketball). I once asked a couple of boxer why they did it. One said to keep physically fit (and now there are better ways that don’t require you get beat up); the other said it was a way to make money (again, nowadays, it’s more likely they’d try to do that by playing basketball).
Boxing has been in decline for so long that it is difficult to say if it is in serious trouble as of today. Wasn’t the heyday of US boxing pre-1960? You could argue that it is now just one niche sport amongst many fighting for its audience beneath the big three. I do agree that there are some particular issues facing boxing at the moment; a severe lack of quality in the heavyweight division is really hobbling its appeal. Heavyweight is the marquee division of the sport, by several orders of magnitude, so if there are no decent heavies then the sports-viewing public will lose interest.
Its probably true to extend this lack of HW talent to a lack of boxers with that charisma x-factor that turns people on to boxing and sells pay-per-views. Fighters like winky wright and floyd just don’t seem to have what it takes to build a crossover fanbase, despite being two of the best pfp fighters in the game.
I think you should sharpen what you mean by ROy Jones, Jermaine Taylor etc ‘running’ in the ring. There is** no way** that these fighters have ever run from anyone in the squared circle, and to suggest otherwise is foolish talk. They are at such an elite level of ability that they are beyond fear, and have profound levels of bravery. If you mean that these fighters figuratively run from one another by not getting the big fights made, not fighting enough, and fighting time-wasting opponents then I have to agree. I suppose this damages the sport, but who can blame a fighter for safeguarding his future if the money is there.
A big topic on boxing messageboards is the rise of mma taking away market share of sports fans from boxing. I’m not in the US so I don’t know how true this is.
Boxing connects to people, and repulses people, on a deep level that other sports cannot compete with. There will always be an appetite for boxing, I think Don King has said that if he finds the first white American heavyweight who is any good, he will make him a billionaire.
Hit and run without mixing it up is what they do. They turn a fight into a dance .The prefight this week between Pavlik and Miranda was an example of fighters that tried to impose their will and power on the opponent. Jones turned fighting into a bore.
Spinks and Taylor was another bore.
I don’t know of any thinking person who at the time liked or or even admired Muhammed Ali, he was a draft dodger, several-times title loser and general asshole. Yet he was and is foisted upon the public as boxing’s “greatest,” a cultural icon of some sort, which is total BS. Maybe that has something to do with the general decline of boxing since the 60’s, as maybe the public then wasn’t entirely composed of nitwits, nor did it grow to be subsequently. I personally viewed Ali lose several fights on TV but because of the ridiculous “gotta knock the champ out” ideal he didn’t actually, contributing to my disinterest and disgust. Ali wasn’t all that, and if he was, screw boxing if that is the best you can offer. Hello Mike Tyson! Plus, did I mention Ali was a draft dodger? That is no small thing for a sport’s biggest hero. Yes, boxing is in trouble, and has been for a long time.
Muhammad Ail is the greatest heavyweight champion in the history of the sweet science. If you want to debate that proposition, in favour of Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Jim Jeffries or any other heavyweight champion of substance, then please do, it would make for a great thread.
Equating Muhammad Ali to Mike Tyson as you do above, though, tells me that you know nothing about boxing, and aren’t going to be equipped for that particular discussion. In times past, when boxing occupied a more prominent position in sports, I guess you wouldn’t see such an egregious error from a sports fan.
Maybe it is a measure of the diminished standing of boxing that a fighter like Mike Tyson is mentioned in the same breath as Ali 
Have you ever actually watched Ali fight?
He is this huge, enormous figure, yet he drifts effortlessly around the ring, flickering out of the path of a punch like a ghost.
The draft he was dodging was Vietnam. I admire and respect him for that.
Sorry, but Ali was a extremely popular and admired until his draft issues, and got back to public acclaim once he returned to fighting. Hell, Nat Fleischer – the dean of boxing – kept him as the #1 heavyweight the entire time he was suspended from boxing. Most fans of the sport liked him for his brashness and style.
He wasn’t foisted as the greatest; he claimed to be the greatest – and backed up his claim. He won the title three times – no one else had – and was a dominating presence his entire career.
One can argue endlessly if he was the greatest boxer, but he’s certainly in the top five heavyweights, and his boxing style was unique: he kept his hands at his waist and didn’t try to hide from punches. Part of that was his physical presence: he had an extraordinarily long reach and could use his arms to keep his opponents from touching his face. He was extraordinarily smart in the ring (see how he beat George Foreman), too.
If another Ali came along, it would be the best thing for boxing: a colorful and intelligent champion whose very presence improved the sport. Without Ali, boxing would have faded out by 1970.
He actually wasn’t a draft dodger. He was opposed to the war, openly took a stand, and faced jail. Eventually the supreme court ruled in his favor. Contrast that with punks like Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh and others who supported the war but somehow never ended up in Vietnam.
Going to Vietnam took guts, openly opposing the war took guts, supporting the war while avoiding it makes you a pussy.
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/greatest/featureVideo?page=greatest150 This argument has gone on lately.
You don’t actually know anything about boxing, do you?
He wasn’t a draft-dodger either; he was a conscientious objector, a stance which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld by an 8-0 vote.
Mike Tyson may, perhaps, go in history as one of the greatest power punchers of all time. He is hardly one of the greatest boxers.
For all Ali’s brashness and trash talking though he also knew how to lose graciously. He didn’t blame the refs, or accuse his opponents of cheating, or whine about unfairness.
Watching old film of Ali I’m simply amazed that a man that size could have moved so damn quickly.
Boxing has been on the way down - I think pay-per-view is huge part of this. I like boxing, and I watch the “free” fights on HBO and cable, but I haven’t bought a pay-per-view fight in years. Its hard enough to build a dedicated fan base when there only a few big ticket fights a year anyway, to make it difficult to catch the bout puts another barrier in the way for potential fans.
Another reason is the propensity to call fights early these days. Thinking again of Ali in the old days, its hard to imagine a heavyweight bout allowing fighters to go multiple rounds with broken jaws, to be pushed so hard as to pass out as soon as the fight ends, etc. I remember when I started to lose interest in boxing several years ago after being painfully disappointed after several pay-per-view fights were called before they ever really got started.
Funny, it didn’t seem to hurt boxing a bit when Jack Dempsey was champ.
If you want to dislike Ali as a man, go ahead. But you cannot belittle his boxing skills, which were stellar. The man was as physically gifted as anyone on this planet. And he was nice too- a friend met him in an elevator in NYC and he was friendly and a real gentleman.
Similarly, I dislike Pete Rose as a man, but I cannot deny his skills as a ballplayer.
Your post is so wrong in so many ways it is hard to comprehend. Ali was great, Ali was witty, and Ali was a hard puncher and a great fighter who fought great fighters like Frazier and Foreman in his prime.
Ali’s stance against an unjust war, won the hearts of many opposed to the war and at the same time made Frazier the hero of those who supported the war. I doubt any sports figures since that time have represented such divergent political attitudes of the nation.
The 70s was still a major time period for Boxing, maybe not its heyday, but definitely its last great hurrah. Ali, Frazier, Foreman and Sugar Ray Leonard were all better and more exciting than any boxers since. In the Olympics, Boxing was still the big event. Now it barely gets covered. Both Ali and Leonard were famous for their Olympic success.
Boxing changed for the worse after Ali, as Don King and his ilk ascended, boxing ceased to be a sport and became a joke. I doubt boxing can ever recover.
Jim
Yes, boxing is in decline, and organizations like the UFC are stepping into the void aggressively with a simple formula: lots of exciting fights free (thanks, Spike!), a few premium matchups on pay-per-view, and a generally “connected” feel between the fans and the organization. Love or hate Dana White, the man is a marketing genius.