I ask, because I was reading this other thread about boxing rules, and thought to myself that professional boxing’s been off my radar screen for quite some time now. I’m not ever sure who the main players are anymore.
Is boxing dying as a big time “spectacle” sport?
Well, let’s put it this way: if you asked an average guy on the street to name the heavyweight champ, he’d probably say, “Uhh… oh wait, don’t tell me. Lennox Lewis. Oh? Umm… Evander Holyfield? No? Uh…”
That tells you all you need to know about the state of boxing in the U.S.
The sad truth is, a pay-per-view between John Ruiz and Chris Byrd (actual champions) wouldn’t draw as many viewers as Mike Tyson vs. Butterbean. And even then, nobody would be tuning in to see a fight. People would be tuning in just on the off chance that Tyson might freak out and do something crazy in the ring.
I’d say it’s pretty well dying. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to figuring out who gets to fight who for what, and that the whole thing is so ridiculously corrupt.
Darn right it’s corrupt. I’ve heard many sports enthusiasts say that boxing is rife with fakery and pre-determined outcomes. Some say that it’s no more real than pro wrestling, but I think that’s going a bit too far.
The corruption isn’t a problem. Boxing was notoriously corrupt for decades. A bigger factor was pay-per-view. In the 50s, there was a boxing match on free TV every week. I can’t recall the last time there’s been a free bout on TV. The only people who can see boxing are the high rollers, or the existing fans who are willing to pay for pay per view. That leaves fewer able to see and appreciate the sport.
There are probably fewer US fighters coming up. Boxing used to be a way for a poor kid to have a chance to pick up some money, but nowadays a kid is more likely to see basketball as his chance to thrive.
Telemundo broadcasts fights every Friday night, IIRC. Unfortunately, I haven’t been around to catch them often, and the ones I remember seeing were of some very low-quality boxers.
I don’t know about this. The Golden Gloves championship is still doing quite well and there are, at least in Chicago, a lot of pro fights being scheduled.
From what I understand, boxing is very popular and a respectable vocation/hobby among Latinos. A cursory glance over *Ring * or other magazine lists a preponderance of Latino names. AFAIK, most of these guys live in the US, making them US fighters.
I think that a bigger problem is that there are numerous organizations that each have a dozen champions in their weight divisions. Trying to keep track of them is difficult for an cursory fan and, without anyone to hold on to as “their” champ/boxer, it’s very difficult to gain interest.
Also, the very rules of boxing are boring. People want to see KOs and bloody noses. These are relatively rare and people haven’t been brought with boxing so the more interesting (IMO) “technical” aspects are lost (think of showing someone who has never seen baseball or football a game. Without an understanding of how complex they actually are, it’s really, really boring).
I have cable and I frequently flip thru free (and woefully boring) boxing on ESPN2.
But it is dying, and I think one of the reasons is the kids coming up are getting smarter, and opting for other, less brain-scrambling sports in which they can make more money, last longer, and come out with their heads on straight.
Ali is the tragic poster boy for it all.
It’s not the same. In 1953, boxing was broadcast six days a week on the major networks, and it remained a staple of broadcasting until 1964. You couldn’t avoid boxing. And into the 70s, nearly all major heavyweight bouts were broadcast, usually live, though sometimes on tape delay.
ESPN2’s coverage is nothing like that. And since people these days tend to become interested in sports they see on TV, this lack is a major gap (it’s also hurting horse racing and hockey, though not to the same degree).
Prior to TV, of course, people became fans due to local sporting events, but once TV took over, interest in the sport was generally fueled by TV coverage (NASCAR is an exception). You can grow up watching major championships in baseball, football, and basketball for free – with plenty of hype and analysis – but when was the last time a championship boxing match showed up on free TV?
Chairman Pow – I was forgetting the latino boxers. Still, the number of places to learn to box these days is considerably less than it was in the 60s. Athletes are turning to other sports.
Well…
If, like a large portion of the American public, you feel that boxing begins and ends with the Heavyweights, then yes - this is a very bad time for boxing. There is no undisputed champion and none of the current belt-holders seem capable of dominating the division like an Ali, Tyson, Holmes, or Lewis. The “man to beat” seems to be Vitali Klitschko but his only career-defining fight was a loss to Lennox Lewis (the fight was stopped due to a severe cut over Klitschko’s eye. He led on the scorecards at the time of the stoppage, but to me it looked like Lewis was starting to land more and may very well have finished Klitschko in the next few rounds*). Since Lewis retired after the fight there was no clear resolution. Of the rest of the top Heavyweights…
Chris Byrd: Highly skilled, good chin, no punch. He’s looked less quick recently and once his speed goes, he’s done.
John Ruiz: Seems incapable of being in an entertaining fight. Jab, clinch, headbutt, punch on the break, complain to the ref…repeat for twelve rounds. It seems to work for him as he keeps winning (besides looking utterly hapless against Roy Jones Jr. in his one fight at Heavyweight), but the vast majority of boxing fans just want him to go away.
Lamon Brewster: Knocked out Klitschko’s glass-jawed and endurance-impaired younger brother Wladimir and then barely beat D-level fighter Kali Meehan. No thanks.
James Toney: Blown-up Middleweight who is highly skilled and has a good punch. He’s also a complete asshole, so makes for a good interview. Unfortunately, his age (38, I believe) is catching up with him and he’s been out of the ring for quite a while with training injuries.
This all seems like a crop of Heavyweights ripe for a talented, aggresive up-and-comer to just plow through (like Tyson in the early 80’s) but if there are any likely candidates out there, they must have escaped my attention.
Now, if you’re talking about fighters between 126 and 147 pounds (Manny Pacquiao to Zab Judah) , this is a freaking golden age. Pacquiao and Judah, Eric Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera, Kostya Tszyu, Floyd Mayweather, Arturo Gatti and, if he follows through with his plans to leave the big boys alone and drop back down in weight, Oscar De La Hoya…
Yes, it both sucks and blows that true championship fights are only on HBO, Showtime or Pay-Per-View, but the money side of boxing doesn’t appear to be hurting and the talent side (if you ignore the Heavyweights) holds up well against any era.
I’d love to see boxing return to free TV (I don’t know what happened to NBC’s saturday afternoon boxing series from last year) but for now, I’m content with Friday Night Fights on ESPN2 and two or three fights a month on HBO or Showtime.
*obviously, pure speculation on my part.
I grant you 6,000 house points for bringing up this dream-match, and another 18,000 for doing it in the first response. The fact that I’m a Butterbean fan (was *almost * my SD username) can only further the proposition that boxing is dying here. I live to watch that monster wander around the canvas like a brawler looking for a stick to pound the guy who just spilled beer on his boots. No boxing form, no cut physique, apparently very little training in the “art” of butterfly fighting. He’s all fight. Tyson, a recognized boxer, is even more of an embarassment to the sport. He had it all: form, style, power, speed; but he was no less a monster. At least Butterbean challenges boxing to defeat him with an artist-let it live if it deserves to live. Tyson only demonstrates that a maniac can be trained to perform a task better than a sane man.
Ah…Butterbean…
I think (heavy-weight) boxing is already dead.
I think it died when a certain “boxer” named Holyfield joined the ranks.
At first boxing was a brutal sport, with two guys slugging it out.
After Holyfield it changed into a game of checkers :
throw a jab, score a point and start hanging on the other guy.
The fight is out of (heavy-weight) boxing, it just has become utterly boring.
I think K1 has taken it’s place which much more explosive fights.
Boxing isn’t dead or dying, but it has lost mainstream appeal.
Boxing is probably my second favorite sport, only to NFL. This thread is filled with a LOT of opinion that might be 180 degrees from the truth.
Can someone provide a cite that says boxing was on TV 6 days a week in 1953.
I also don’t think there are far fewer US fighters coming up. That’s just something people say.
Boxing is probably cleaner now than it ever was. The worst you see now, at least at the higher levels, are “questionable decisions”. And I just mean “questionable”.
Boxing is on ESPN2 weekly, Comcast Sports weekly. There’s live boxing outside Baltimore every couple of months that regularly gets sold out.
Fighters are making tons of money through deals with PPV, and HBO and Showtime. We’re in an era where if 2 guys can put on a good show, even if they’re not great fighters, then HBO will pay them a million bucks each to do it again (see Gatti-Ward II and Gatti-Ward III).
There is a problem right now with mass appeal and that’s mainly because the heavyweights haven’t been interesting for a while. That’s not looking like it’s going to change for a while.
Boxing appears to be big for Latino fans, though I have no cite. The Staples center in LA sells out for big non-heavyweight fights. A big, recent PPV event was Barrera-Morales III for the WBC Super Featherweight Title. Both Mexican fighters. De La Hoya still draws a crowd, and now runs his own promotion company and is a part of HBO Boxeo De Oro, a boxing show on HBO Latino.
On top of that, for the last 10 years you had one of the greatest ever, Roy Jones Junior, fighting regularly, every fight on HBO.
Bernard Hopkins is a 40 year old Philly fighter who hasn’t lost since 1993 and has 20 consecutive middleweight defenses, a record.
Beyond that, neofishboy gives a little survey of what’s at and below 160, a land just filled with talent and personalities.
So, boxing isn’t dead. It has a hardcore fan base that pays for HBO, Showtime AND Pay-per-view events. It doesn’t have mass appeal – it’s a sport you have to pay to watch – but it has it’s own model for survival.
HBO has become a big player in the promotion and marketing of fights. They put on beautiful productions with great on-air talent. And I think that their boxing production is akin to their original programming. It’s better than anything else on TV, and it has to be supported through subscription fees because the masses don’t want to pay for it.
I have no idea what vinryk is talking about. If there has been anyone in the last 30 years who brought boxing back from tactical struggles into blood-and-guts warfare, it was Evander Holyfield. He had numerous all out wars in the 90’s. His fights with Riddick Bowe contained some of the most violent rounds I’ve ever seen in the heavyweight division.
I don’t even know what K1 is, but until it’s combatants can bring in 30 million each through pay-per-view, I don’t think we can say it’s taken boxing’s place.
Whoa, there, son. Holyfield is a legitimate heavyweight whose style can be both scientific and ferocious. Don’t ypu be dissin’ the Real Deal.
I see parallels in boxing and the US comic book industry, both of which are in their doldrums for the same reasons: greed. Boxing’s popularity was abetted by its ubiquity, just as comics used to be popular because they used to be everywhere. Boxing eschewed free television broadcasts and got greedy with short term profits with pay-per-view, just as comics tried to absorb more marketshare with the Direct Market, bypassing the newsstands. So what happened?
As bloodsports became even more passe, boxer’s leading proponents alienated their fans by making boxing matches harder to watch and boxers went from being admired and feared athletes to sad spectacles. The audience let in droves.
As superhero comics became even more passe, comic book companies alienated their fans by making comics harder to find and more expensive to purchase – comics went from an enjoyable literary medium to something to be speculated on. When the speculation market went bust the audience, few of them real fans, left in droves. As a result, as bad as boxing has gotten, comics are in even worse shape.
Greed’ll kill anything.
While Trunk may be right that boxing is thriving in its own way, there’s no doubt that it’s role in mainstream culture has changed radically. In earlier parts of the 20th century, boxers were some of the most famous people out there, and boxing matches were huge events. Boxers were seen as role models and representatives of their races. Dads taught boys to box in the backyard. Big matches were big big big news. Now, boxing is not mainstream at all. To a fan, this may be hard to believe, but a non-fan can easily go through life without hearing a thing about boxing other than the latest Tyson horror story and the very occasional billboard advertising a match. While you can make a case that boxing isn’t really “dying,” that it’s just changed, you can also argue that those changes are akin to death.
Speaking of Tyson, I think he might be one of the biggest factors keeping new fans away from boxing. Especially female fans. Boxing itself seems brutish and icky to me, but I’d be willing to entertain the possibility that it’s actually interesting if you know what you’re looking at. But a sport that tolerates the likes of Tyson? No thanks.
Which brings up my main point–I wonder how much women have had to do with boxing’s exit from the mainstream sporting world. In the past 4 decades or so, American society has become more co-ed than it ever has been. In the past, social events were much more segregated by gender. Even at events where both men and women attended, they often separated out for large parts of the occasion. Sure, lots of times men get together to watch a game without women around, but it’s perfectly common for a mixed group to watch a game on TV or attend a sporting event. And more and more women are becoming sports fans in their own right, watching games, and spending money on sports. I know lots of women that are fans of major league baseball, NFL and college football, and NBA and college basketball, and many other sports too. But boxing? Not so much. I’m sure there are female boxing fans out there, but I expect its a relatively small number. Not only that, many women find boxing downright repulsive. Ultimately, if you wanted to have a group of friends over to watch a baseball playoff game, you could invite women. Most women would eitherbe interested in the game, or at least they wouldn’t mind being around while it’s on. But I don’t know how many women would be into chipping in for your pay-per-view boxing match. So, I guess I’m saying that the co-ed-ization of mainstream sports fandom might be contributing to boxing becoming less and less mainstream.
But female fans might actually end up being the salvation of boxing. Lots of women are actually doing it. There have been some very well-received movies lately about female boxing. (And I recently saw Rocky for the very first time. I was blown away. I loved it.) I’d love to try it myself. I think people tend to be much more interested in watching pro sports that they themselves have done on some level. So we do see female interest in participating in boxing, so maybe there’s a chance that women might start wanting to watch boxing. Once they get rid of Tyson for good. 
Ya know Green Bean. . .what you said are actually some reasons why I DO like boxing.
“Hey Mike Tyson, you just won the heavyweight championship of the world. What are you gonne do now?”
“Probably get a couple of cheap hookers. I sure the fuck ain’t going to Disneyworld.”
(fake story, made to illustrate a point)
I prefer NOT to watch sports with women. When I get a pay-per-view fight, and the lads come over, you know it’s going to be swearing, drinking, smoking, and eating meat.
The problem, NOWADAYS, is the “co-ed-ification” of men. They’re no longer allowed to enjoy the appeal of their baser instincts without being labelled louts and pigs.
And now with the hockey strike…
Trunk why don’t we have a Dope/Box-fest at one of the fights? It’s down at Martins East or Glen Burnie right?
It’s at Michael’s 8th Avenue in Glen Burnie. Every couple of months, they have Thursday night fights, Ballroom Boxing they call it.
Martin’s East is out in Rosedale and there are somewhat regular fights there, too. At least there used to be when I was more attuned to the local scene.
Next fight for Ballroom boxing is March 10th. TIX aren’t cheap, but I might be up for something like that.
If you want to read a fantastic piece about the troubles with professional boxing, check out “The Shame of Boxing” by long-time boxing reporter and documentary-maker Jack Newfield.
(Newfield’s work has been mainly for New York papers, and his documentary Don King: Unauthorised won an Emmy.)
You can count me in – I live a couple of blocks from Michael’s.