British Boxing Dying ??

The difference being that in Puerto Rico only baseball exceeds boxing in terms of popularity. In England football, cricket and both forms of rugby far exceed boxing in terms of numbers participating, at all age levels.
Watching Sport Matters on Setanta Ireland the other day, the presenter seem to suggest that the general public in Ireland only give a damn about boxing every four years when the olympics comes around. With the exception of Hatton, Calzaghe and Khan I don't think it's any different in Britain either.

 

Nah. I spoke about this a while ago, there was a period coming where the old guard are all going to go out. Regardless of whether Witter and Hatton won, they are still nearing the end. So is Woods, quite obviously.

There is only Froch and Haye.

And then a bunch of talent. The worrying thing for me is the medium term. I don't think Brook, Murray and a few others are even close to fighting the very best. Jamie Moore, perhaps, that could go either way.

Long term there are no worries. There is so much young talent at the moment.

 

It alays goes in cycle, but boxing will never die. Khan, Haye and Froch will keep us ticking over until a star comes through, we have great potentiol with Frankie rooker and Nathan Cleverley. We do need UK tv coverage though.

 

Buncey, If Macklin fights Barker and loses that potentially lessens his future purse's and drops him down the rankings is that not the reason a lot of fights down happen earlier on?

 

Every six months we have this thread

I think there is bags of talent on the way through, it's more a question of getting the public into it, building the profile of some key fighters

We punch WAY above our weight as a country and have done for years, British boxing isn't dying by any stretch of the imagination

 

You want to worry about the TV more than the fighters. The talent is there, yes there is a little bit of a void at world class for the next few years, but it will fix itself eventually. It always does, and there is some of the best amateur talent we've seen for a long time.

If there is no TV no ****er will get to see them regardless.

 

The country is so full of talent right now I reckon TV companies (as reluctant as they may be right now) will be FORCED into shinning a new light on the sport very shortly!

By the way I have Brook to beat Jennings just as easy as Cotto did.

 

Britain needs a Pac-Man.

 

There will never be a Pacman without a platform to perform on.

 

The TV schedules are too packed with quality programming, boxing can't get a look in. I mean, who wants to watch a world title fight, when you can watch 'I'm a Big Brother X Celebrity who Dances on Ice with the Stars Factor'

 

As said part of the problem is TV but the promoters are partly to blame as well.

As a promoter Mick Hennessy is shite. He's had two fighters fighting for a world title recently and he couldn't get a TV deal for both. Froch is fighting in the Super Six, one of the best things to happen to boxing in ages, and there's no TV deal in place.

You've got to give credit to Mick for putting on quality domestic shows but he doesn't promote his guys well enough. Joe Public doesn't know about John Murray, Tyson Fury, Junior Witter and even Carl Froch. Froch fought Pascal on ITV1, primetime on a Saturday, and he got 1million viewers!!! That's ****ing shite. Hennessy didn't promote the fight properly but neither did ITV.

ITV should have done a series of small 10-15 minute 24/7 style clips about Froch and shown it twice a week after Corrie in the weeks leading up to the fight. That would have got people interested, that would have introduced the public to Carl Froch the person and not Carl Froch the fighter. They should have sold Froch (and the fight) to the British public.

Sky too could make boxing massive in this country if they wanted. They could build up the likes of Saunders, Gavin, DeGale, Jeffries, Sutherland, Brook and Cleverly and make them stars.

They should make fly on the wall documentaries about these guys during training camp and then put that on Sky1 at a reasonable time. That would introduce these guys to the general public from early on in their career. The average bloke doesn't know who our top domestic boxers/prospects are. TV need to give these guys more exposure.

Sky also need to sharpen up their boxing coverage. They need presenters who are more entertaining and appeal to the audience. I'd much rather listen to Naz than Nicky Piper!

Undercards need to be sorted out as well. We don't want to seen an average British title fight and then 3 or 4 mismatches. We want a quality British title fight and then a meaningful chief support followed by prospects in learning fights.

British boxing needs a radical overhaul otherwise the sport is going to become increasingly marginalised.

 

Great post :good

 

I think the same thing goes for U.S boxing.

 

At least HBO and Showtime are realising that and taking steps. HBO has had only 1 fight on PPV this year (Hatton-Pac) and only have two more planned for the rest of the year (Pac-Cotto and Mayweather-Marquez). They made a commitment to only put the massive fights on PPV.

In years gone by fights like Margarito-Mosely, JMM-Diaz, Cotto-Clottey would have been PPV. Even the discussed Pavlik-Williams fight would have been expected to be on PPV. However, this year all these fights have been on regular HBO.

This year Sky have already shown 3 PPV fights and could potentially show two more (certainly Haye-Valuev and Khan's next fight). Out of the fights shown on PPV on Hatton-Pac was PPV worthy.

In addition, HBO are doing features like Ring Life about young prospects and contenders to raise their profile. Golden Boy are putting on Fight Night Club and streaming it live for free for boxing fans anywhere in the world.

Are we seeing anything like this in the UK?