Premier Boxing Champions Will Fail. Why? The Law Of Diminishing Utility Of Course

I love that boxing is on TV far more than it used to be, there's no reason to complain from me, because I'm a fanatical follower of the sport. In fact I wish more Boxing were on, I'd love it if they'd run Boxing matches from the parking lots of CP Freshmarts in the searing hot Thai sun, I'd love if they'd run the ostentatious WWE style matches from Europe with their strobe lights and 80's metal bands playing the boxers into the ring. I have no problem with Al Haymon putting on as much boxing as I can handle.....but that's me, most people aren't as big a kook as a lot of us are.

Full disclosure I'm not a big fan of Haymon he's seems like a shady character out of a 70's exploitation movie, and his underhanded tactics that he's used to try and create a monopoly in the sport of boxing I find to be a little repugnant. But I feel that way about most promoters and managers no matter who they are. Of course he has his staunch defenders but here's the catch everyone who sings Haymon's praises are usually Floyd Mayweather fans who for some creepy sycophantic reason find it necessary to defend everyone no matter what, who happens to be associated with him, no matter how repellant they may be. If this were De La Hoya or Arum doing this I highly doubt there'd be as many people on these forums singing it praises.

While I don't like Haymon, I would still love for it to succeed because I'd love it if a lot of fighters who I happen to like would became household names and eventually turn into huge box office draws similar to Mayweather and Pacquiao. But I don't believe that will happen and this is why.

The Law Of Diminishing Utility
(Or as its known more commonly now as The Law Of Diminishing Marginal Utility.)

The official definition is: a principle in social science: such as one acquires successive units of a good, the intensity of desire for additional units declines.

I'll put it in Layman's Terms, Everybody likes Macaroni and Cheese Right? Well people should eat it every night then Correct? It's your favorite after all. But they don't because if you eat Macaroni and Cheese every night you'll be so sick of Macaroni and Cheese that the mere idea of eating a spoon of it after having it for days on end will make you sick at your stomach and you won't want to eat it anymore. Same thing goes for Birthday Cake or Pizza or any other food, because people get sick of things very quickly and very easily in this country, especially in our current mentally impaired constant ADD state we live in. If something gets old after a few days out of the door it goes and on to a new trend. Because people are very fickle. And that is why PBC will fail.


A few examples I can give when I was a kid UFC showed up when I was around 10 or 11, it seemed mysterious and forbidden, it was on PPV therefore out of reach for many people, so word spread and eventually it spawned a whole generation of people who were mystified by it as children to grow up and participate in it as adults. So the UFC took over completely in the mid to late 2000's basically replacing Boxing as the Nation's favorite fight sport, every channel wanted it, it was on prime time, on Fox, on Versus now known as NBCSN. And guess what happened.... oversaturation, it was everywhere all of the time inundating fans and people got sick of it and its now gone back to being a niche sport to a certain extent once again. Too much of a good thing while theoretically should be awesome but in reality even good things lose their luster.

Same goes for Professional Wrestling, it became hugely popular in the mid 90's and everybody was obsessed, There was WWF (now WWE) WCW, little underground promotions like now iconic ECW, CZW, XPW eventually after the fall of WCW, TNA popped up and guess what... people lost interest, it was just too much to follow for regular people, they felt over-inundated, and they stopped caring. Because when it becomes a chore to have fun, the fun is taken out of the equation, the fun in turn almost becomes a job. Which sucks.



And I'm predicting the same thing will happen to PBC, it will in all probability end up faltering in the long run. Sure its exciting now, because Haymon is making the biggest matches he can possibly make to get audiences interested, he's taking risks by putting his top talent in with legitimate threats hoping in the long run it will pay dividends. The risk to him is worth it even if it means he has to sacrifice a few of his top talents in the process by them possibly being exposed or being KO'd, why because it sucks the audience in at least momentarily. But what happens when he has the audience hooked with his flashy lures, the quality will quickly start to diminish and before too long, we'll be right back to seeing Garcia-Salka type matches being foisted upon us by NBC. Quite frankly Garcia Peterson is almost on that level now. He doesn't have a roster as deep as it may seem to sustain this business model for very long. While HBO's tactics seem harsh by keeping its stars fighting only the at least in theory best opponents, and rejecting matches that don't live up to their standard, its that very standard that brings the audiences in when they put on their events. If they put on subpar programming they know their audiences would lose interest, which is why they are so rigid in their match selection.

So in time the match quality will drop off sooner more likely than later, and with a new show on every other week on either NBC, Showtime, CBS, CBS Sports Network, Spike TV, NBCSN, ESPN, or even Top Rank on TruTV. People will feel overwhelmed by the amount and underwhelmed by the quality and it the long run it'll most likely do more harm to the sport than good.

But I'm hoping I'm wrong...but I doubt that I will be.

The Law Of Diminishing Utility is very reflexive...why...because its Human Nature.

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Also as a Sidenote: What a ****ty cheesy name Premier Boxing Champions is. It has an American Gladiators or American Ninja Warrior quality to it.

 

It feels like an old WCW show called Thunder from the late 90's its awful.

 

As annoying as Teddy is, I hope he keeps his job, and I hope the format doesn't change too much, I like the grungy pool hall feel of FNF's but Haymon will probably **** it up.

 

WWE and UFC are successful to a certain extent, but aren't nearly as popular as they used to be, because people grew tired of them due to overexposure. Also for every WWE there are many WCW's and TNA's which didn't or don't have the talent or decent writers to keep the fans interested, same with UFC's there are many Strikeforce or WEC's littering the dustbin of history, and based on Haymon's lack of depth in his roster PBC will most likely be another TNA or WEC. The established brands of HBO and Showtime Boxing flourish with their paltry 1.5 million viewers and the mainstream will tire and lose interest very quickly with Haymon's eventual subpar telecasts.

 

Yes he has 160 fighters, but only about 15 maybe have drawing power. Another WWE analogy, when WWE, WCW and ECW merged most of the wrestlers sat on the shelf and were eventually let go due to McMahon having far more wrestlers than he knew what to do with, many of whom were bores who couldn't sell s***. In some ways similar to Haymon's current roster. Truax vs Jacobs and Garcia vs. Peterson are some of the best matches he can offer to draw in fans, that right there should be a worrying enough sign.

Haymon is attempting to build a monopoly snatching up tons of new talents just to keep them out of the hands of Top Rank or Golden Boy, not because he's some benevolent guy who actually cares about these fighters.

 

The Law of Diminishing Utility is that Haymon's PBC is overexposing the population to the sport and they will tire quickly after being fed a steady diet of average matches and move on to another food group metaphorically speaking. Too much of a good thing is usually not a good thing. They will get too much too soon and become bored and move on.

Also there are peaks and valleys the peaks are new fans who are fickle Johnny come lately's and the valleys are the hardcore fans, the sport will always have the people that make up the valley, but it will have a hard time maintaining the people that make up the peaks with this much ultimately lackluster programming for them to have to follow and be exposed to the myriad Garcia Salka like matches in the future..