The Decline of Boxing

My "career" as a boxing fan started more than 50 years ago, in the early 60s. In my part of the world (Denmark) boxing was not something that was show on the one(!) TV channel that was available to us... so back then my window to the boxing world was The Ring, Boxing Illustrated and Boxing News. Here I could read about Harada, Locche, Tiger, Jofre, Napoles, etc... knowing full well, there was no chance in H***, that I would ever be able to watch these great fighters in action.

Fast forward half a century - and now we have dozens and dozens of TV channels. Several of them are 24/7 sports channels... and today every major show in the US, UK and Germany is beamed live right into my living room! Last Saturday I watched the great Stieglitz-Sturm match, followed by Hopkins-Kovalev... and tonight we get Wlad-Pulev from Hamburg. Next week it's the Pacquiao fight from Macao. And no PPV bull**** either... all part of the cable-package!

Yes, there's a lot wrong with boxing today, but from my pespective (as a fan), this is the best time ever!

 

Yep, the opportunity for upward mobility exploded after WWII.

After the war there was also the G.I. Bill, which made a college education available to people that would have never has the opportunity before the war. Who wants to get punched in the head when you can do something else for a buck? All in all, better for society for not so good for boxing.

Technological advances allowed other sports to pull spectator dollars away from boxing as well. Before the war, boxing was really the only night sport you could watch. Improvements in lighting changed that. At first it was harness racing that drew spectators away, and then baseball. More importantly, you could bet on those as well.

Television had a huge impact, too. In its infancy, television was too primitive to broadcast a baseball game effectively, but the confined space of a well-lit boxing ring was made to order for the idiot box. And just like now, television will take a genre that works and just saturate the airwaves with it. You could watch boxing on TV at least 4 times a week at one point. So who's going to drive into the city and watch club fighters when you can see contenders and main eventers for free from your living room? That killed the small clubs, and that took away the places where a young fighter could learn his craft.

 

Baseball, auto racing, college football also were hard-hit by the advent of television. Not only did many minor leagues in professional baseball ceased to exist after a boom period of the late 1940s, the attendance at Major League Baseball games decreased dramatically during the 1950s. Numerous small auto race tracks went out of business during the same decade. College football attendance was hurt by the presence of television for a time.

Football and basketball at the professional levels got a bit of a foothold during the 1950s. Of course, professional baseball remained far more popular during the decade.

The fact that the G.I. Bill permitted so many World War II veterans to attend college was only one part of the equation. The other part of it was that there was a tremendous demand in the booming post-World War II economy for educated people to fill the numerous newly-created jobs with college education prerequisites. In the long run, such people paid much more in taxes than if they worked in low-wage jobs, so the G.I. Bill was a tremendously successful investment in many ways.

- Chuck Johnston

 

I've been a boxing fan for about fifty years....(my God!!!) and I can say for sure that the best of boxing is long past now. Mediocrity has been creeping up on the sport for years now...notable lows have been the end of 15 round title fights...no more free tv...multiple champions in each division, including those dreadful "interim titles"...at one time I could tell you the names of all the champions in each division....but now, forget it...my interest is just not there for the present scene,...though it lit up a bit with Kovalev-Hopkins...and whenever Pac fights, and I must say, I like the Klitschko Bros,...other than that, give me the past...great memories brought alive in the classic and historic forums...that's where it's at for me today,...and as always, all other sports can be flushed down the commode for all I care. It's always been about boxing for me.

 

Great post Burt, as always. But I do disagree with one of your comments. I think if anything's killed boxing it's the remove of boxing from the free viewing to the PPV viewing.

Why?

Because if you watch a fighter 2 maybe 3 times you can become a fan of that fighter, especially if they have a 3-4 minute bio of him each time he fights. You know where he's come from, which city he lives in and of course his fighting style. It was because we knew Foreman, Frazier, Ali etc from watching them that we became fans of theirs. This is the exact same model the UFC has used, put on a lot of free fights, let the fans get to know these fighters and they when they reach the top put them on PPV. While I could live forever with never paying to watch fighting, this is the new business model.

But what boxing needs is more free tv bouts so that casual fans can become fans of certain fighters and ultimately the sport. When I was younger I recall watching Hagler and thinking to myself that's one guy I wouldn't want to **** off. lol But he ultimately was the fighter who cemented my love of the sport.

And of course when Ali fought Frazier in the thrilla from Manilla the whole world stopped. Why? Because we could watch it. On PPV there's nothing that's going to result in that kind of following. The world stopped what they were doing for Ali Frazier I, Frazier III and the rumble in the jungle.

 

Too bad none of them enjoyed it. What a terrible fight that was.

 

In 1951 when Randy Turpin thrashed Sugar Ray Robinson the whole of Britain was behind him and it was a huge, huge fight.
A lackey interrupted a dinner party at Buckingham Palace to tell the king the result.the king then announced "Turpin has won !!!" To all the guests.
A jet fighter flew over Leamington Spa the day after in honour of the middleweight king.the Mayor and Mayoresses of leamington spa and warkick also honoured the new champion at the town hall.
It was said in palace, pub and parlour the whole of Britain held its breath.
Never before and never since will a champion of any sport get that acclaim.
The world doesnt exactly turn on its axis when one of the bore-klits defends against A N OTHER these days.

 

Good posts,my friend - As always. Vitali and Wladimir were good but boring

 

Boxing was huge on US TV in the 50's, Pabst, Budweiser,Blue Ribbon were just some of the Beer sponsors,then there was Gillette.:huh

 

Everybody knew the fighters of the day back in the 50's, People would huddle around their little tv sets and cheer for their favorite fighters. It was healthy to me....boxing was seen to be the manly art of self defense and American men weren't feminized like they are today. What a great era it was before the poliitically correct disease infected us. I feel that I was just born too late by a couple of decades. These are shitty as hell times.

 

Three things that contributed to the decline in Boxing's popularity:

1) The PPV system:
Boxing has become a very profitable but closed market. Direct fees are now preferred to advertisnment revenues. When one single PPV fan gives you the same income than 1,000 public viewers, you go for the safe/easy income and ditch open broadcasting and the common folk.

2) The alpabhet soup:
In the old days you knew who was the CHAMPION and you knew he was the best (usually). Nowadays, it is like "no fighter left behind" policy with so many federations. You get lost trying to keep track in this diluted environment, because it seems that now anybody can hold a world title.


3) The Mayweather model:
Every age had its share of duckers and cherrypickers, but Floyd has taken it to a new level, setting the path for young fighters to follow. Why taking risks when Floyd's career proves that you can become obscenely rich and even claim to be TBE just for playing safe?. Why to face tough fights when you can get the same rewards with smart management?. We are entering into a dark age for boxing that will be dull and boring because everybody wants to be the next Floyd, and the rule number 1 to be Floyd is: "never risk your undefeated record".

 

Hard to argue against any of these point. :good

 

Sorry to disappoint you but none of those fights were on free TV.

Ali-Frazier 1 wasn't shown on Free TV in the U.S. four THREE YEARS - until a film of the fight was shown on ABC and Ali and Frazier got into their studio brawl.

If you didn't buy a ticket or purchase a closed circuit ticket, you didn't see Ali-Frazier I FOR THREE YEARS.

Ali-Foreman wasn't televised on free TV until January 1975 ... three months later. And it wasn't televised again for 20 years. (Now it's on all the time.)

Again, Ali-Frazier III wasn't on live TV. It aired in January 1976 ... again, three months later.

In fact, a world heavyweight title fight wasn't televised LIVE on U.S. television from Frazier-Ellis in 1970 to Ali-Lyle in 1975.

Free TV didn't have a whole lot to do with it. I grew up on boxing in the 1970s. Some fights would be televised on Sa****ay or Sunday afternoons. Usually, if a fight was shown on Sa****ay, CBS, NBC or ABC would show them at the exact same time, so you had to pick which one you wanted to watch. And before they came on, you had to sit thru Cliff Diving or Barrel jumping or some other ridiculous attraction they showed before the fight ... because they'd never actually tell you when it was going to start.

And if you tuned in late, and the fight ended early by knockout, that was it. They didn't show hours and hours of boxing. Tune in between 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. ... and don't be late, because if you miss the fight - wedged between the other events - you were out of luck.

And if you wanted to know who won a fight overseas, you generally had to wait until a boxing magazine you read came out and they'd give you results that took place three months earlier.

Today, there is literally boxing on some channel in the U.S. every single day of the week. There is actually MORE boxing on now than ever was the case in the 1970s. I know, I watched it then and I watch it now.

It took a lot of effort to watch boxing back then. It's easier now ... and it's also far more popular now all over the world then it was back then. This thread should be called the Decline of Boxing IN THE U.S. or the Decline of Boxing IN NEW YORK.

Because it's more popular now in more countries than it ever was then.

 

The big difference between then and now are there were no computers then, literally no one had VCRs to record what was on, and residents in most cities had three (maybe four) television channels to choose from.

So, if you watched TV, you watched one of three or four things being shown.

And if you wanted to see a sporting event, you had to watch it when it aired ... because it likely wasn't going to be shown again.

Today, you can watch streaming fights from around the world live, watch fights on hundreds of channels - record whatever you want and watch it when you want. Or go to YouTube or a torrent site and download what you missed.

So large groups of people aren't watching anything at the exact moment something occurs.