Being a boxing fan these days is torture, fights that used to be shown in the 60's,70's and 80's on regular TV are now way over priced on PPV...do the promoters know that the real boxing fans are the working people and who would gladly sit back and enjoy a decent fight. Then you have fights like the Vlad/Chambers fight that are not shown at all...I know you can watch it on line but that's not the point. Boxing is killing it's self with greed and bad politics, there are many great fighters these days but they go unknown compared to a lot of the MMA fighters especially with the younger generation, which is sad because boxing in my opinion is more skillful...not that there is not skill in MMA, but there are fights that look like a bar fight or school yard wrestling matches. Maybe we are seeing the demise of boxing ,especially in the USA. I know Pac/Mayweather would be an expensive PPV and maybe worthwhile paying for...but I remember coming home from work and watching SRL/Benitez on ABC...for free!
you have 2 people to blame Bob Arum and Don King they are the ones who orignally worked the deal to move boxing to cable TV, which lead to state of boxing which is today Dont get me wrong I still watch it on versus and friday nite fights but the really talented fighters are moved from espn to hbo in a blink of an eye without any really stiff challeges to get there ,1 or 2 solid wins now your pay per view
They should standardize the way fighters split the purse. Paying the fighters ludicrous amounts lead to the cherry picking of fights. No matter how good you are, you wont get a crack against the superstars if you don't generate enough crowd.
how many sports are on mainstream tv now? in the uk you have got to pay to see football.And boxing does a limited number of ppvs whereas the ufc has one every few weeks
Agreed. I live in the UK and following boxing here has always been an uphill struggle. There is no boxing show on terrestrial television or the freeview channels, meaning you need to pay a subscription fee to other television packages to see any, or even have the option of buying pay-per view fights. It was near impossible to watch boxing as a kid because my parents, like a lot of others probably, weren't big TV watchers and didn't see the point of this double-expense. Until the advent of youtube, there were unforgivable blind spots in my big fight knowledge! All of this means boxing gets next to no exposure here. Its appears only rarely in newspapers, maybe a mention on the eve of a colossal fight, or a fight involving a British star. Other boxing publications, such as The Ring or the UK magazine Boxing Monthly aren't widely available and are probably only easy to get hold of if you live in a city. I should qualify this rant by saying I currently live in Scotland, I don't know if the situation is much different in England or the rest of the UK! I doubt the average Scot could name one professional boxer though..maybe Amir Khan if prompted, because of his Olympic fame, but I think even Froch and Haye would be a step too far!
too many belts kill the sport we shouldnt have 4 "world champions" at every weight in the older days, ray leonard was the welterweight champ, duran was the light weight champ, bob foster the light heavyweight champ no one knows who anyone is and who is champion. WBO welerweight champ is pac WBA welerweight champ welerweight champ sugar shane WBA welerweight Vyacheslav Senchenko (somehow we have 2 of the WBA belts) WBC welerweight champ andre berto IBF welterweight champ Jan Zaveck this is why boxing is screwed up...
