The Pacquiao fight against Rios is being held in China. Combine this with Arum trying to sell Zou Shiming to the Chinese public, Arum is creating a chinese boxing fanbase. This will generate a lot of money for Arum as their population is huge. This is a smart move by Arum, both Rios and Pacquiao are both Asian looking so that doesnt hurt. I think other countries like India have untapped potential, should Golden Boy try to expand their horizons there or is it too early?
Of course he is going to you dont just think they will have Pac vs Rios out there with out Zou on the card do you? this fight is going to sell like crack to the chinese public just so they can get a chance to see Zou on the same card.
indians cant fight, sounds prejudiced i know, but at least chinese have a history of unarmed combat competition in kung fu. im sure they can get more than enough warriors to take up boxing and bring in the support of their countrymen to the world stage. the door is finally open with zou and the growth possibility of boxing has never looked more promising.
You're a genius for working that out. That's exactly what they're doing they will be looking at places like Singapore and the Arabian Gulf e.g Dubai and Abu Dhabi. India will be another few years before that market is entered. This is good for boxing as hopefully it will mean Bob Arum will work with the Japanese promoters as they have some great fighters
Anyone can become good enough to win a belt in a weight class given they dedicate themselves to boxing. There's four belts per weight class. It's not that hard to find the weakest belt holder and beat him. The reason many countries do not have many champion boxers or contenders is because there is a lack of a culture of boxing. Getting a number of Indian boxers who become champions or African boxers who become champions inspire many in that country to follow that same path. If I were ever to become a promoter, I would heavily promote a good fighter from some ethnic group that has a large population such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, ****stan, and Nigeria. Creating a superstar from each of these countries would boost boxing greatly. Philippine boxing for example has risen because of Pacquiao and to a lesser extent Donaire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
Just wait til a year or two from now when internet boxing forums get flooded with Chinese and Chinese-Americans telling us how Shiming is the best. (see Linsanity). We already saw how terrible it was with another certain country in the past few years. We are about to be subjected to another terrible fanbase.
Thats actually good. There's actually a huge American bias in boxing and old greats are overrated to the max. We need other perspectives.
If Arum can figure out how to get his product on Chinese screens AND actually get paid for it, he's smarter than Hollywood. That government and culture has no respect for intellectual property rights or distribution rights.
He ain't creating anything with Zou. Zou is a hypejob and will be thoroughly thrashed when he steps up.