Anybody else fed up with boxing promoters?

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Not Anarchy.....Fairness.

The most vulnerable people in boxing are the 4-8 round fighters. Let's face it folks boxers are nowhere near the most educated of professional sportsman. If anybody needs protection it is the newcomer who normally has no wealth or education. The Firewall Clause between managers and promoters does not cover them. And it also does not prohibit a boxer from being both his own manager and promoter...get your research on.

Does this make sense to anybody? Can anybody else see what it is really intended to do?

It kills the rural guy who has to wear all the hats in boxing. It empowers the boxers who do make it to championship level bouts to represent themselves...though they always could. They want to deal with the least intelligent person when the boxer gets to the top level...the boxer. They don't want a dude like Vinny Vechione or Stacy Goodson or countless others to exist. They don't want boxers to be able to form strong local teams where they are.

It's all BS when you treat a land mass as varied as the USA as a whole. Each state should retain their own methods of operating boxing. It is also BS when any national body tries to influence what is going on as far as Indian Reservation Boxing. They don't have a legitimate right to be doing what they are doing.

Somebody in boxing needs to stand up to these creeps and break the damn law. Too bad Andre Ward went the way of the monster promoter route. he'd have been a perfect case. Who has the right to tell Andre Ward that he has no right to let Virgil Hill train,manage and promote his career if he wants to? He can hire himself, why can't he hire Virgil Hill?

We need a local man to develop a talent and promote him locally to a large following. Then we need that guy to tell everyone to F off and schedule his charge with a regional title bout and promote the damn thing. I will personally fly there to help assault any f'n fools who try to come stop the show. if need be you take the scum to The Supreme Court. if they have no sense, you burn that f'n false hall of judgement down too. None of them have the right to be doing this. :deal

 

yeah but, eventually the best fighters in other organizations who are clearly good enough and ranked highly, feel the pressure to make the move to the ufc, and then they're eventually matched well if they survive the usual introductory gauntlet. It literally always happens.

 

Or they just buy up the other promotion!

 

I think it's one promoter in particular. We all know who that is.

 

or that

 

Yes.

A selfish, exploitative, greedy old man who has stood in the way of making the fight fans want to see most.

 

Happy to read the great posts so far. Can`t say I understand the Ali act. But here`s my take on part of the problem.

The sport of boxing is decently healthy everywhere in the world accept in the states. Yes boxing is more popular in the states then many places like England and Canada. But its run better in these countries and punches above its weight. In the states its under producing because American promotor have forgotten how to sell boxing and just rely on the 28 and 35 million dollars that showtime and HBO hand out every year for liciencing rights.

In the states, all the dates, opponents, and money is controlled by two stations. HBO and Showtime have a monopoly over boxing and like all monopolies they bread inefficiencies and lack competitive drive. Which means that as a promoter if you have a top fighter that wants to be paid 250k to 1.5 mil a fight you have two options 1) build up his brand to a point where he is able to generate around 2-3mil in gate revenue or 2) get in line for the next available Network date, let them chose the opponent, let them chose the date, and let them do most of the work promoting the fight.

Most promoters chose option number two and then proceed to do **** all work. This leads to two problems. The first is lack of hype. Boxing isn't made into the event sport it is everywhere else in the world and no real effort is made to mobilize fans and get them to show up. No one shows up to the fight and they often end up giving away 1000s of tickets as promos just to put butts in seats for the cameras.

Where I'm from in Canada Interbox has three centers of wealth generation (venues) where Lucien Bute can sell between 10, 000 and 17, 000 tickets: Montreal, Quebec City, and Romainia. Interbox puts his picture on the side of buses and bilboards around the city, gets their PR people to get him on the local sports casts even when he's not fighting and buys plenty of advertizing time on TV. The pay-off is autonomy. When ShowTime only has enough money for Bute to fight twice a year and doesn't want to sanction a fight with his mandatory Interbox goes thats fine we'll do the fight in Romainia and in doing so makes a few mil one the side.

Now if you're still reading you might be asking what does Bute having the ability to fight Jean-Paul Mendy Europe have to do with saving boxing? Nothing. But the point is that the promoters have created three centers of wealth where they can attract other fighters to fight come and fight, independent of the big networks. And that creates more opportunities for a talented fight to fight. WHICH IS REALLY WHAT IS KILLING BOXING --->>> all promotional bull**** asside the biggest problem is boxing is that TALENTED FIGHTERS DON'T HAVE ENOUGH OPPORTUNITIES TO FIGHT! Full Stop. Not fight eachother, just fight period. Talented athletes is what sells any sports and in boxing the most talented athletes only showcase there skills 1-3 times per year. Thats not a healthy bussiness model.

Also if where more economic rewarding opportunities for an estabilished fighter to fight for big money (even as the opponent) then there would less gamesmanship, maneuvering and jocking for dates. Also the demand for a name fighter after a loss would remain higher then it currently does, meaning that fighters would be more willing to face eachother.

 

Good post and nice name. Boxing does need to let their stars shine more.

I hate f'n HBO and Showtime. I reordered them for the Wlad/Haye farce. They just went up on me again so I might have to axe them and wait for the next decent fight to reorder on the cheap.

I am f'n ready for an all boxing channel or at least an all combat channel that features a lot of boxing mixed with others. I'm sick of paying these movie arseholes for fights that are so infrequent. The channels flat suck besides the boxing.

 

Are you Tunney from the Boxrec forum? :think

 

Yea, the best fight the best.... over, and over, and over, and over again. They are running out of a roster, pretty quickly too in the higher weight classes. Underpaid fighters, injuries up the whazoo, delays of fights, replacements of main cards. There is a price for running the majority of your fighters hard, and honestly, it's an extreme. Entertainment at the fighters expense, I guess you could get into the argument of whether that's right or wrong, but the bottom line is having a "free market" approach to combat sports is a bad thing, but having a monopoly is just as bad. A healthy mix would be optimal.

 

Yes, I am one and the same.

 

And I'm Kronkpride. :deal

 

Had the feeling you were :deal