I'm not saying he's totally unknown, but he isn't really a household name; he certainly isn't a particularly well-known face. At least not here. It's not like his fame is almost unavoidable, like, say, Tyson, for example. That's **** all to do with what he's earned; enough people are still interested in boxing to watch the big fights, so the best in the sport are all very rich- or at least have earnt enough to be very rich.
Muhammad Ali wasn't a recognizable name here in Russia (previously USSR), at least from late 1980s on, but Mike Tyson's name was heard by pretty much everyone here back then.
True, I think Hatton has come closest in recent years to enjoying the kind of popularity that a Bruno, 'Enery or Barry McGuigan used to enjoy. Some of those TV viewing figures for McGuigan's fights were astonishing- 18+ million, around a 3rd of the population.
Tyson is still the byword fo knocking people out. Even today, somebody will say "I feel like i've gone 10 rounds with Tyson" when they feel like ****. I wonder when this will end? It could be a while. Reminds me of the old scene in Reggie Perrin when he had an accident, which resulted in him getting two black eyes. His boss asked him how he got them, he said "it was the wife, she thinks she's Joe Bugner". His boss replies: "When did Joe Bugner ever give anybody two black eyes?" :yep
In my country (Brazil, a country without a big tradition in boxing) people who follow sports channel a lot know Mayweather a little bit, not too much, but those that pay attention to different sports know that he is a great boxer. They don´t know his weight division, age, etc... I would say, in terms of fame, in the world, Wlad is more famous, even though most people know him as the "that ukranian HW champion", at least from my experience.
Btw, on Ali, my dad and my grandfather know him as Cassius Clay, I was watching an Ali documentary one day and remember my grandpa saying "oh, Cassius Clay, he was good", and my father said it a few times as well. If you say "Muhammad Ali" they might say "who?"
Michael Schumacher is a byword here for anybody speeding up, any vehicle, a car, a bicycle, anything.
The beauty (and frustration) of boxing is that it lies almost entirely in the realm of the subjective. There are virtually no absolutes, and we as fans, no matter how learned we think we are, keep banging our collective head against the wall trying to apply rational, mathematical, linear criteria to find out who's REALLY the best, who would've beaten whom, etc. We remain frustrated by our efforts.
Maybe 1 in 50 people in the US have ever heard of or heard and remembered the name Michael Schumacher.
So, is he as famous as Ali or Leonard were ? Is he more famous than Usain Bolt and Serena Williams ? It's not fabricated. But saying that his earnings directly represent his popularity or fame (relative to other athletes/entertainers) would be a gross distortion.
Very good last point. If they'd had that kind of PPV setup back then, what kind of numbers do you think Leonard or Ali or even Hagler would draw? MANY more than Mayweather. It's a pretty tenuous argument to say that boxing is alive and well compared to older times based on a graphic that didn't even exist back then.
That's kind of the point I was trying to make. That even a Hagler (a relatively lesser draw than the "superstars) would probably still draw as many PPV buys as Floyd.
i have no doubt boxing is a smaller sport than 20 years ago, no point on this thread makes me think boxing will die out.
back in the fifties and sixties, there was a TV panel show called What's My Line about guessing folks' occupations. The highlight would be the appearance of a famous personality as a mystery guest that the masked panel had to guess. Some of these shows with the mystery guests are on you tube and can be viewed. My point is that boxers appeared as the mystery guest and were famous enough that a masked panel could figure out who they were quickly. Sugar Ray Robinson, Archie Moore, and Floyd Patterson among others appeared. Ingemar Johansson appeared as a contender in 1958 and was guessed by the first questioner. That is mainstream fame. How many boxers today could appear and be guessed--at least in America?
