Why was there always chaos in the ring from around the 70s-90s?

A lot wild stuff still happens in the stands, particularly when rivals from Latin American countries fight, but it’s hard to notice on TV.

 

A lot of dodgy betting probably involved too.

 

You’re talking a long period of time — three decades — so there are going to be incidents.

I think a lot of it has to do with so much boxing being televised in that era so we’re more aware.

Heck, fights at the Olympic Auditorium you’d fairly often have people throwing cups of **** into the ring if they weren’t happy with the result (either just rooting for the other guy or didn’t like the decision) but we don’t see as much of it because it was off camera or just locally televised.

 

Maybe not so much now, but yes within second s of the fight ending the ring would be packed.

 

[QUOTE="Reuben Jones, post: 23701123, member: 126865"I'm from the UK, and I can guess you could say the same thing about football hooliganism. You'd think it would be worse nowadays, but it's not even comparable to what they call "the dark days of the 70s", where it was at its peak.[/QUOTE]

Ecstasy and the seats going in killed all that. The seats going in (and the prices going up and the smoking ban and the surveillance) killed off all the less martial pleasures of match-going too.

 

Sure there’s ’more boxing’ out there to be seen … but mostly no one sees it. It’s the old ‘if a tree fell in a forest and no one was there to hear it, did it make a noise’ thing.

There could be tons of stuff like you’re describing happening, and there may even be video on some obscure streaming platform … but it isn’t part of shared experience like Lou Duva going ‘berserk’ (as Jim Lampley warned us was coming) at the end of JC Chavez-Meldrick Taylor I. Or Fan Man at a Riddick Bowe fight or whatever shenanigans you cite — we know about them because we saw them and discussed them with friends (as in conversation with a real live person) at the time and/or discussed them over the years in gathering places like this.

In short, you say ‘this happened a lot’ in a period of 30 years — with that period ending a quarter-century ago. Let’s see in a quarter century if we don’t have plenty of examples of same being discussed that have happened in the current era. There have been things like Anthony Joshua’s ridiculously embarrassing rant on Ukraine after he lost to Usyk, Tyson Fury basically stepping over a comatose Szpilka to confront Deontay Wilder, all kinds of odd stuff around Klitschko fights (was it Dave Haye with the decapitated Wlad shirt, and Fury wearing a Batman costume chasing he Joker through a press conference?).

Unless you can precisely define what you’re talking about in a way that can be quantified, I’m not sure your thesis is correct that it’s stuff that used to happen frequently but doesn’t ever happen anymore.

 

My father saw Duran fight in Panama City (looking at Boxrec, must have been Zambrano or Suero) and said there were more fights in the stands than on the undercard.

 

I’ve seen some wild ones in LA.

 

The main ones I remember being the ring brawls with large entourages after Tyson and Bowe fights, both NYC guys. Both had huge entourages, Tyson paid his hangers on huge somes, often with plenty of gangsters around him, much the same with Bowe. They typically used gangsters as security.

I can't think which fights you're referring to in the 70s as I've watched the full fight shows of those and if there were multiple in ring brawls I can't remember. Ali had an absolute huge entourage too though.

I'm not sure which incidents you're referring to in the UK, because I don't remember kick offs in the ring. There's the Hagler fight were the English hooligans start lobbing anything they could at Hagler after Minter was saying before the fight 'no black man can take my title' or words to that affect

These days security is better, there's cameras everywhere and there's less tolerance of criminal behaviour. Pre 00s it was easier to get away with. There also isn't any active boxers who have multiple street guys in and around their corner.

 

To me that seems to be two different things:

1) How many people enter the ring after a fight

2) Brawls/minor fracases breaking out

I think it depends on the fight. Again, you’re comparing a period of 30 years to ‘these days.’ Lots of major fights didn’t have as many people in the ring in the 1960s-90s. And most didn’t have any kind of post-fight incidents.

Probably promoters/commissioners today are more mindful of the value of seats — 20 people in a fighter’s entourage may get seats, but they aren’t just kind of lingering around (and fighters are now usually given a small number of ‘comps’ — free tickets — for big fights, which is negotiated; and also have the option to buy more seats if they wish. Back in the day it was probably more like ‘they’re with me.’

But for a few examples, here’s Usyk-Joshua postfight. Camera angles are tight but it looks pretty packed (and anyone with a rag on their head apparently had a pass to get in the ring).

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Here’s Crawford-Canelo: Seems like a ton of people in the ring to me:

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I’m suggesting what you’re talking about is anecdotal — again, we’re talking three decades worth of fights. If we list the 100 or 150 biggest fights of that era, I doubt a significant percentage had any sort of incident in the ring after.