I was reading the thread about corrupt sports groups and it made me nostalgic for watching boxing on tv. I know that all the major fights are now on pay per view only. Plus, there are so many titles which diminishes seeing a championship fight because pretty much every boxer and his brother can claim to hold a championship belt.
But, I’ve noticed that there aren’t even fights on ESPN or any of the regional sports networks. In the past, there were fights on ESPN and USA network pretty much every Friday and Saturday night. You didn’t see the really big names, but they gave you 2-3 hours of fights, with usually a minor title bout as the main event.
Is there any boxing on free TV? Do they still publish The Ring, KO, or other boxing news?
MMA has camnnibalized a large portion of the boxing audience. Add to that, the most recent major star in boxing was russian you have a recipe for deminished US coverage.
As a kid in the early eighties I was treated to free-to-view coverage of Hagler/Hearns/Duran/Leonard etc. going at it hammer an tongs on a fairly regular basis.
Now? no meaningful fight is on standard TV and as such the multiple champions cease to be household names. I think it is that simple. I don’t think those four I mentioned or even Ali would be the legends they are were it not for free broadcasts.
I believe it has become a niche sport, because the general prime-time TV viewing audience is no longer captivated by a sport whose objective is to hit each other in the head repeatedly until one of the combatants is brain dead.
My dad and I used to watch the fights every Wednesay (Pabst) and Friday (Gillette) night. Black and white, on the only channel we could get. Sunday night was fake wrestling. Times have changed.
Too many boxing organizations all having a different champion. Nobody knows who the real champions are anymore. Lack of a charismatic heavyweight. If Ali had come around now, he’d still be a star but until we get another heavyweight superstar, the sport is going to be marginalized.
Consumers had a better grasp of who should fight whom next, than the promoters. They made the manipulation of the sport for profit too glaringly obvious even for fight fans. It is kinda time for a shift, when even the die hard fans resent the obvious corruption.
I mean, it wasn’t news, it was always there, most everyone knew. But when you’re so bold as to be so overtly manipulative, you are effectively announcing how truly deaf you are to the fans, and deserve to get left behind.
– All the big fights are on PPV, and there’s nowhere to watch up-and-coming fighters on tv.
– Crooked promoters and general corruption
– Promoter squabbles getting in the way of the fights people want to see
– Weak heavyweight division
It’s always been a niche sport. The Golden Era of boxing was driven by the Great Depression, people looked for cheap entertainment and there were plenty of boxers available because of the dearth of other jobs that didn’t require getting hit in the head. The Silver Era of boxing in the 1950’s created a resurgence of popularity because of televised fights, but also nearly destroyed the industry as ticket sales fell for a sport that was available for free on television.
Boxing is relatively healthy right now. It is growing internationally, and PPV sales are bringing record profits. The number of US boxers is down as a percentage of population but there are still plenty of boxers here and abroad. Viewership for non-PPV televised fights is down somewhat, but there plenty of boxing fans left who continue to maintain the PPV events and the numerous boxing events on cable. HBO and SHO hold major fights several times a month, boxing is available on a number of basic cable channels including Fox and NBC sports channels, and if it’s not on ESPN right now that’s probably because of the busy NHL, NBA, and NFL game schedule. Local boxing promotions are still strong in their traditional markets as well.
Note that Floyd Mayweather has been the highest paid athlete in the world for two years running now, and only the second athlete to pass the $100 million dollar mark after Tiger Woods. Hardly a sign of a failing sport.
ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights” season has for a number of years gone from January to August, with an occasional bout in the off season. They’ll be back at it in January.
I’d say it is an increasing distaste for overt barbarism by the public in the name of entertainment.
The appeal of seeing two people pummel and literally attempt to incapacitate each other has thankfully begun to wane as reams of data are produced citing the cumulative effects and permanence of such physical damage, especially to the brain.
Boxing is still popular, unfortunately, but its heyday is over. Its demise can’t come quickly enough for me.
That’s my thinking as well. There are ways to watch boxing on TV for “free” (as in, you need cable and sometimes an additional sports tier as well) but you have to go looking for them. There’s ESPN Friday Night Fights, there are fights on MSG, I think there might be some on Fox Sports 1, and there are probably fights other places as well. But none of them are really promoted. And there is definitely no heavyweight division these days. Hell, the boxers that the casual sports fan can name are boxers like Pacquiao and Mayweather. If that’s a fight that ever actually happens, it’d probably be at around the welterweight division.
I’d say you don’t understand boxing at all. There’s no pummeling. 99% of a fight is actually the boxers avoiding getting hit. Statistically speaking is way less dangerous than horse riding, scuba diving, or American Football. In any case, it seems to have been replaced by MMA, a style that, if anything, is way bloodier.
With my experience in the medical field, I know enough to understand the permanent detrimental effects years of blunt force trauma has on the human body. Do you?
Please show your work and cite statistics showing boxing to be less dangerous (I prefer ‘damaging’) than horse riding or scuba diving.
I remember reading an article several years that boxers (except for those at the top) got a very small proportion of the profits of their matches. Is this true?
It’s easy to characterize that way, but in general they are not entitled to any of the profits from their matches. They get paid a fixed amount for fighting, the promoter takes all the financial risk. He has to pay the fighter even if there are no profits at all.
Except for headliners it’s difficult to determine what portion of any profits are due to a particular fighter. It is really only a problem for second tier headliners who are the real profit generators at small events. These days there are few cases (in the US) where a fighter is not compensated reasonably. Overseas I can’t say, but I would expect in many place things operate as they did in the past where many fighters had almost everything they actually earned taken by crooked managers and promotors.