Boxing is getting worse, not better!

Addendum : it is late and I meant in my beginning line, the fighters of today, cannot compare to the fighters of the 1930s to the 1950s. Sorry...

 

Not sure if you are aware but there are a couple other countries on this big blue marble... countries thay had zero participatipn in the so called golden era.

 

There is more opportunities and exposure than there's ever been. There was never room for all the great fighters to be great fighters in the past where as now there is.

I would say the world championship elite circuit (for the few superchamps) boxing is very healthy. For fighters with the best backing boxing is still a great sport and that's always been the case.

What is wrong with the sport is the absence of competative circuits for ordinary fighters to make a living as a winning fighter at a lower level. There just is not a living for a fighter who is not world level unless he wants to go on the road as an overmatched loser.

I feel that (apart from HW) the top end has always been comparable for skill through the era's. A good fight is still a good fight. I just think the best level is a smaller collection of fighters now. The world of boxing has always had a distubution of wealth like that of a third world country. Today it is more so.

The Heavyweight division has become a genetic science experiment that went wrong in recent years but I have hope that it can change whilst there is still talent in all other divisions. It is only a matter of time before the smothering effect is no longer tolerated ....just as soon as a promoter gets behind a heavyweight who wants to out-box rather than out-clinch the opposition.

 

Before reading the rest of the replies, this is my take.

The sport is in a clear state of decline. Especiially if you look at the sport from just 20-30
years ago.

There are less gyms now.
Less people are taking up the sport.
The great trainers have died off leaving a vacuum.
The amateur programs are not what they used to be.
etc.

I mean, we have 30+ year old heavyweights that are 'prospects.' We have fighters well into their late 30's and early 40's that are still champions. Where does this happen in other sports?

It's in a clear state of decline. But, I think there is still the chance of it all being turned around. Boxing needs to be better marketed, and better incentives need to be created to people wianting to take up the sport.

People love to watch a good fight, of that there is no doubt. Boxing can yet again become a top 10 sport if it's run by people who care about the game.

 

And who was stopping them from participating? You can go down the line on every champion from the golden era and you will see that there is someone from almost every nation...

 

This is true. I'm seeing a lot more Russians in the pro game now, and I hope that this in turn leads to more and more folk from the old eastern bloc countries williing to give the sport to go.
I'd also like to see a potentially resource rich country like China starting to produce fighters, getting serious amateur programs going etc.

It is a more global sport now, this is true. But at the same time, where it's gaining in popularity elsewhere (I think) it's also declining in the more established markets like the U.S. and maybe even Mexico.
I think it's still a pretty popular sport in the U.K from what I can see, which is good.
Over here (S.A.) it's for all intents and purposes, dead.

 

The fact that most recent hw title fight, the showpiece of the sport went essentially unnoticed by mainstream western media and the fact floyd is one of the highest paid athletes in a world of millionare athletes can be set against each other. However it cant be denied that boxing has huge competition for market space from other sports, how many pro skateboarders have become millionare's?, not many but a lot more than 50 years ago.

I think burt has a very good point saying tv has had a lot to do with the decline of boxing's popularity. not to say many fighters haven't been paid by tv, which is good.
- boxing exists as a mess of promoters venues agents ect, is is far easier for a tv network to do a deal with sports that have strong overall leadership, i.e most of them have governing bodies, schedules and long term league wide contracts as a result.
- when lots of parents see a ring death on tv the effect is obvious

this is not to blame tv for anything, its contributed much positive to the overall state and prosperity of the sport. If the current rise in the worth of sports advertising (due to large numbers of people generally only watching sports and x factor live) continues, well see generally more sport and more ££ and coverage to boxing(although boxing specific pay chanels could offset this and continue the downwards trend).

 

Ya think? Total ****...I've been watching since 1964...

 

Safety first fights...jab...grab...hold...jab...grab...hold...12 rounds of "boring"....er,....I mean "boxing"...for some sort of title...total ****...zzzzzzzz

 

Yes, I agree, boxing today really stinks! Just last night I watched a fight between some Alvarado guy and a Russian, who looked like a miniature George Chuvalo. What a total bore... I fell asleep halfway through, and don't even know the result. Not that I really care, because nothing of interest happens in boxing today!

 

There's somewhere in the area of 22,000 bouts annually right now, so we are actually about 6,000 up from the 90s, and about double the number of bouts from the 60s and 70s. Fighters fight less often now, which means there are even more of them to get all of those bouts, which means the talent pool is that much bigger, but less experienced. The problem is how spread out they are. In the heyday of the sport most of the action was in the US and fighters could take a road trip and fight everyone in their division who was any good. If they lived in a city like Philadelphia or New York there might be a couple of contenders or champions just in the area. Now to make a big fight happen you often have to fly around the world to another country or continent. That's one of the reasons we don't see as many good fights and it's so easy to duck people now. It's not that there is no talent, it's that it's spread too thinly. There are 17 weight classes instead of 8. Your best bet to get experience is to live in a boxing hot spot, somewhere with a high concentration of fighters. If you live in Salt Lake City, you're probably not going to get the experience you need to be great. If you live in Mexico City, Berlin, or London you should be fine.

 

This fact might capsulate the state of boxing today compared to the 1940s for example.
The New York Golden Gloves tournament which produced a Ray Robinson, Gus Lesnevich, Floyd Patterson ect, had so many amateur finalists those days that MSG had THREE RINGS competing at the same time each night to pick a champion...Three Rings at one time. Some fighters had 8 or 9 bouts under their belts, so deep the pool of fighters were
those days...Today a boxer could have 1 bout and he competes in the Golden Glove finals...Take one of the finest boxers I ever saw for sheer skill Billy Graham who had
about FIFTY fights in local clubs in NY, BEFORE he had his first main event bout in the old MSG in New York. And he was a "connected " fighter trained by the great Whitey Bimstein....I would see him box prelims in New York almost 2 or 3 times a month,
against stiff opposition in local fight clubs as ST. Nick's, Ridgewood Grove, Broadway Arena, learning his craft....The fighters of those days were so busy fighting and improving their skills, until the advent of television which eventually shut down all those
local fight clubs that spawned the learning experiences of so many fighters of those days...why would the average Joe leave his couch and brew watching his 12" tv screen
to travel to a local arena by train and shell out hard earned dough when he now had
television ? Fight clubs closed, less fighters, less fulltime boxing trainers to teach their craft, and culminating in a smaller pool of competition...Of course their were exceptional fighters still fighting after tv, but fewer than the times of the 1940s and 1950s...

 

You make it sound like boxing only ever took place in America. Sure, during the golden era the best Europeans had to come to New York to get world title fights but the European scene was always huge. Max Schmeling, ingo Johansson, Marcel Cerdan, Freddie Mills made world title fight money as national champions in soccer stadiums before winning world titles. The British champions had real silver belts and fought in front of thousands of fans even after the war. There was not enough room for all the great fighters around the World. lots of European fighters made do with national titles and in weight classes bellow heavyweight were in many cases as good as World champions and made as much money. Jock McAvoy knocked out the world champion in a non title fight then went back to his British title. What about the attendance records in South Africa and Argentina? The titles might have been in New York but there were healthy fight scenes elsewhere.

Now that TV has cheepend the value of national titles international fighters are chasing the same belts that the Americans are. Boxing is not going down the tubes because Americans have to travel. It is not what it was for a whole lot of reasons. It's just different.

 

Lost its lustre for many reasons...not as many desperate men willing to get their brains mashed....also lack of mainstream tv stops fighters becoming 'stars' hw division is a joke..no athletic guys with boxing skills ...maybe few people than ever see boxing as a viable life choice.