I woke up in the night, as I often do when a fairly big fight is going on in the US, expecting RBR of Ortiz and Ruiz Jr. Not realising that the fight is actually on tonight. Which got me thinking about boxing on Sundays, and indeed weeknights. I remember a Buatsi card on a Sunday about 2 years ago and I really found it refreshing having something decent to watch on a Sunday. So why is boxing predominantly on Saturdays? I remember hearing about midweek fights (Tuesday night boxing I think) and wondered why this doesn't happen more often.
Not a definitive answer and just possibilities off top of my head. The promoters aim to make as much money as possible, so Saturday appears to meet that need by bums on seats and tv audience. Boxing has/had its roots as a working class/blue collar sport, so traditionally the guys watching would not be working on saturday, fighting on a sunday might well have upset the religious part of society. Of course big fights have happened on other days such as for example in these heavyweight historical matches Dempsey won the title on a Friday, Foreman beat Frazier for the title on a Monday, Clay beat Liston on a Tuesday
Because most people don't want to go to a boxing event and get drunk on a Sunday if they have to go to work on Monday. Do you go out on a Sunday night? Probably not? You go out on a Friday or Saturday.
You forgot people in other part of the world like Asia or Australia who can't watch it cause it's working day for them on MONDAY!!
Regarding the highest possible audience, it's interesting that fights became common on Saturday nights because, in the US, Saturday is historically the worst night to air a TV program going back 40 years. If you had a show and the network put it on Saturday night , you were doomed. I think boxing promoters and cable TV networks started doing it because there would be fewer popular shows and less competition on the air. But far fewer people in the US watch TV at all on Saturday night. So the audience will be relatively small anyway. Sunday and Thursday nights seem to be when the most people in the US watch TV. Which is also why the NFL airs Sunday night and Thursday night games.
I have read that terrestrial TV in the 50s caused closure of many small fight venues as audience could watch bigger bouts for free.
I remember " super fight ' ' matches example like Hagler Leonard & Tyson Spinks were Monday or Tuesday night
Interestingly, fights in the 1950s were shown weekly on different networks on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights. Not typically on Saturday.
Originally BBC Sportnight on a Wednesday showed fights that had taken place in the UK on Tuesdays. ITV had regular series called Seconds Out and Fight Night on Tuesdays and Wednesdays as well as nationally televised fights on Midweek Sports Special on a Wednesday after News at Ten. Sportsnight then started showing fights, live or delayed, the same night, on a Wednesday. The ratings really became huge with the Big Fight Live on ITV , on a Saturday, in the 90s (Eubank Benn 1 and Watson Benn were on Sundays though ) and the BBC also had occasional live fights on Saturdays and sometimes Sunday ( Lloyd Honeygan in particular). They were golden days, salad days if you will but once Sky saw the ratings, boxing often had 8/10 most watched sporting events ina year, they did a deal with Warren with the promise of PPV and now we have what we have. If you want to blame anyone for todays TV situation, it’s old Fwank mainly ( with a bit of Lennox Lewis and Frank ( Kellie ) Maloney thrown in ).
