Boxing is DYING! (And has been for 100 years)

Boxing is not the sport it used to be in terms of level of popularity in my lifetime. Lots of this has to do with the boxing commissions, many multiple champions in each division and the watered down nature of skills all this brings. We need to return to the time where there was one champion in every division. The lay public needs to be able to point to one person as champion not 2, 3 or more.

 

Great post Will Cross.

 

Make that 200 years. 1810s or 1820s they were telling frequent sparring exhibitions were killing bareknuckle boxing.

 

not the same at all!

in an age with modern technology Boxing should be the most popular it's ever been!!!

Able to be seen literally around the globe, Rankings, Records, Reports and Commentaries at your finger tips. BUT in spite of all this it IS dead.

and it's dead because it is full of B.S, arrogant hype, plastic paper champs, protection, percentages stats, false ratings & match ups and every other conceivable modern day sport injection imaginable. Everything but Honest to Goodness Champions, 1 per weight. Less weights. One Governing body and just full of fighters that don't matter, will never matter, never get near a Champ. No More CONTENDERS and so on.

It's got ALL the modern advantages, but it still can't make it.

Why? because it is S hi t and full of nonsense. People expect more from Top Level World Sport!!!

 

I have thought about starting this same thread a few times.

How much in receipts did Mayweather produce over the weekend? Yeah, boxing is dying.

 

It doesn't occupy the same cultural space as it used to, it's not as popular as it used to be.

But it will never die. A big fight or a great fighter will always get people's attention.

 

Obviously fights are selling better because of PPV.
It's not as if Dempsey or Ali weren't popular enough to fight on PPV.

 

it never got swept away by ufc and can make the news occasionally, not the biggest sport in the world but it aint dying by a long shot.

 

It's dying, and it's sad to say but the only thing keeping it alive for now is Floyd's persona out of the ring.

 

Good thread, I particularly like the way a couple of posters got the wrong end of the stick- like the ones stuck in 1903. Every sport is dying if you listen to boring old farts enough. The same old crap is said time after time and they dole out the same old crap:

• "today's fighters are like autmomatons going through the same motions fight after fight"
• "kids don't have the ambition any more"
• "Today's fighters won't be remembered in years to come"
• "The heavyweight scene is rubbish compared to (insert year here)".

They were saying this stuff 60 odd years ago- even longer as your post proved. :yep

It's the same in any sport, you'll always get some old **** still believes Rod Laver would beat Roger Federer and Jesse Owens would leave Usain Bolt standing. But yeah, let's ignore the footage and what we can plainly see with our own eyes because some old coach who's now 103 is the only person to listen to on these subjects, despite being blind for 35 years :yep

I didn't know this and while I agree that big fights will always be very popular- the US population must have increased by about 100 million or so in the last 30/40 years surely. So you're always going to get bigger sales overall. But I definitely agree with many of your points made in this thread.

Of course, there is a lot wrong with boxing, but that's mainly the amount of weight divisions and meaningless titles. But we've been used to that for 30/40 years by now. A return to fights shown on prime time slot on free tv would be nice but like you say the alternative would be no more superfights and we've simply moved with the times.

 

OK, so you're telling me that Oscar, Manny and Floyd are a lot more popular than Ali, Frazier, Duran and Leonard ?

PPV is fine with me.

 

Do you think perhaps it was a lot easier to watch PPV fights for free in those days, ie ways to cheat the system?