The Decline of the Popularity of Boxing in the United States

I think it has a lot to do with all the pro sport teams in the US. People root for all of their home teams in baseball, football, basketball, hockey, etc... Fighters aren't making names in their home towns anymore, well, rarely anyway, nobody doing it in Philly for sure. Guys aren't becoming fighters for the same reason, too many other sports that are a lot safer than boxing. A lot of other countries have pretty much soccer and that is it.

 

If you are among the vast majority of the immigrants to the US (Hispanic and to a lesser extent Eastern European) you dig boxing a lot and you back it up with cash. Don King figured this out in the 90's.

 

bingo! .. anytime they do anything they pack up and ship off to new York , vegas or California

 

As the heavyweight division goes, so does boxing. The US no longer dominates the Heavyweight division, the Eastern Europeans and former Soviet Countries do.

 

in fact the "vast" majority of American immigration is from Asia and Africa.

Immigration to US
2014
Americas-----396,605
Asia & Africa-----498,852

2014
Americas-----398,068
Asia & Africa-----528,921

2015
Americas-----438,435
Asia & Africa-----520,720

While Mexico remains the #1 source for immigration, China and India are 2nd and 3rd. I am not certain, but I wouldn't be surprised if immigration from China & India is more permanent. Many from Mexico return to their homeland.

I live in a city in which a high percentage (in fact a majority) are Hispanic, but there aren't any boxing matches held here. Football, basketball, and baseball are the sports one sees kids playing. These are the sports supported by the school system.

 

Muhammad Ali's condition hurt boxing in the U.S. I'll always believe that.

And the second best American heavyweight of the 20th century was Joe Louis, and he didn't end up any better than Ali.

Ali was by far the biggest star boxing produced in the 20th century, and the last 30 years of his life, when you saw him, it was "wow, look how bad he looks."

Let's put it this way. The NFL is already starting to suffer because so many players are suffering from CTE and many young players are just saying they don't want to play anymore if that's what they have to look forward to.

But if Tom Brady, at age 50, is unable to speak, and can barely walk, and shakes violently, the NFL will be a niche sport like boxing in about 15 years. You just can't have the BEST people to ever participate in a sport end up in terrible condition and expect people to want to pursue a career in that field. Nobody wants to spend the last 30 years of their life brain damaged and crippled.

For boxing to really come back, we need guys to retire on top (like Mayweather) and for people like Deontay Wilder to make a lot of money and gain some real exposure and finish his career strong. And see boxers have a successful post-boxing career like Foreman, for instance. Become a "positive" household name.

So other young men look at them and say they want that, too.

But when the top guys are broke or crippled or both a couple years after their careers are over, it doesn't help.

 

Asia and Africa are giant land masses and population centers, so yeah, if you combine them against essentially Mexico they will be #1. My boxing interest bloomed with living around a lot of Mexicans, so those were the dudes (along with a few black friends) with whom I initially watched the sport. The average Joe on the street would not know even Chavez, let alone Barrera or Carbajal, while these guys worshipped them. Don King grasped this, especially after he lost his marquee heavies.

Another factor not mentioned yet is the advent of the UFC.

 

I think the author might be overplaying the significance of the Pryor v Arguello fight. I wasn't around at the time but I don't think I've seen much written about this fight having an adverse affect on boxing's popularity. The Mancini v Kim fight certainly had a real impact, as most championship fights went to 12 rounds after that. Although I remember Jeff Ryan arguing that the real reason fights were reduced to 12 rounds was due to advertising - it fit better into an hour of broadcasting - but I don't know how true that is. The Holmes v Cobb fight might have done the most damage of those three fights to public perception of boxing as it was a heavyweight title fight and an obvious mismatch.

But I think it's a combination of the other factors already mentioned that led to the decline of the sport in the later 1980s that has only worsened since:

-PPV taking over from network TV in the US had a knock on in that fighters gained less mainstream exposure and casual fans lost interest
-The rise in popularity and financial growth of franchise sports like the NFL and NBA made more appealing viewing choices for American sports fans and career choices for the traditional US boxing demographic. And add Doublechin's point about boxers and what happens to even the best of them and it's not hard to see why Americans are less interested in watching or participating in it.

As Larry Merchant once said when asked what happened to the great American heavyweights, "they're all playing power forward in the NBA or linebacker in the NFL".

 

The rise in GDP and overall quality of life makes it so less people take up Boxing as a professional career.

The prevalent talent, and communities that have not yet reached middle/upper class are the most prevalent in boxing.

You can see a direct correlation between the struggle of Irish, Italians immigrants, and their prevalence in the sport. As soon as certain immigrant groups “rise above” a certain economical class, you no longer see nearly as many of them in the sport.

Mental faculties are a valuable thing that most are not willing to harm, or give up. Especially if they have something good in their lives.

Some fantastical medical breakthrough that could assure the minimization of long term health risks could be a huge factor in bringing the sport back to prominence.

 

In today's egalitarian world there's no place for confrontation and boxing is full of it, not to mention micro-aggressions and sweat and stuff.

 

So basically, Apollo Creed is the cause of boxing's decline.

"Stay in school and use your brain. Be a doctor, be a lawyer, carry a leather briefcase. Forget about sports as a profession. Sports make ya grunt and smell. See, be a thinker, not a stinker."

 

It’s true. Boxing must’ve also been a much easier choice than a lifetime of hard labor work. During the industrial revolution, wouldn’t you rather box than work a factory line?

These days job opportunities have blossomed in creative fields, and intellectual workers are rapidly replacing labor workers. In a more idea-driven economy and job market, getting dumber every time you visit the gym just seems like a bad idea. And it’s not just the health risks. Boxing changes your personality no matter who you are. Integrating the practice of fighting into your lifestyle will harden you, for better, and given the modern sociological climate, for worse. Like Mike Tyson said, this is no longer a strong mans world.

But hey, stick me in a lifetime of Henry Ford factory lines, and I’ll lace em up no problem. If I die, I die. Better than enhaling tar and getting my bones crushed by heavy machinery.

 

LOL. I was a factory manager and used to take shifts every now and then on the floor to plug holes. After a day's doing the same motions 2000 times you may as well have been in the ring; everything aches. Yeah, I'd box too.

 

K2 killed boxing in America.