British Boxing Dying ??

Well done Ishy. I think a lot of promoters get a little muddled up with there Job description. There's a big clue in the name of the role........... PROMOTEr. Whenever a fighter turns pro the first question a promoter asks is 'Can he sell tickets?' It seems to be 90% of the worry for them.

I understand that the cost of putting on shows has increased but putting on this nonsense on 'paid for' TV shows is ridiculous. Small hall yes I can understand but a shitty sky show is absolute ****.

Good story from this weekend and one that deserves a mention is from the VIP show this weekend in Colne.

Yassine El Maachi had been struggling to get a match due to his lack of ticket selling capability and pretty frightening talent so Steve Wood agreed to put on El Maachi on the condition that he fight Geard Ajetovic who is an equally talented and avoided fighter who is not a big ticket seller. At short notice Ajetovic was forced to pull out and Steve contemplating the financial loss was going to pull El Maachi off the bill..... Why should he pay for a fighter to fight on his show with no gain to himself. Rather then take him off the bill Steve kept him on at unessacary cost to himself, and El Maachi fought Alex Spitko.

He kept him on in good faith and the locals who stayed after the main fights were treated to another excellent top class performance from this cracking fighter. That for me says a lot about Steve Wood. Top man for putting him on.

 

If you look at our boxing history,having no world champions at any particular given time is the norm.However in times gone by there were only the 8 major weight divisions,and 1 champion per division,so it was incredibly hard to win a title it was hard just to be rated.If you look back through the decades up to say the eighties how many genuine undisputed world champions did we have? You can't name many.
Is boxing dying? Well i think back then there were more hardcore boxing fans around to sustain the sport,now it relies more upon the followers of particular fighters who are not necessarily boxing fans to sustain it.As long as there's the hype and relatively moderate fighters can win alphabet belts then boxing should survive.

 

I'm hoping this is a long term strategy over there and i hope we follow suit. This new ESPN channel might be able to really help things.

 

this always goes in cycles, people are also saying mexican boxing is "dying" because they haven't got many big stars at the top, but they're just coming out of an incredible run led by the likes morales, barrera, dlh etc. Theres always gonna be a little down time after such an era, the future for British boxing in terms of talent is bright, there's massive interest amongst the youth and the gyms are packed.

heres the problem, as others have said its the lack of coverage particularly terestrial and promoters not promoting and being shortsighted, lack of coverage is the biggest problem facing the sport right now other sports are backed by corporate sponsors and companies so boxing needs "free tv" more then any other. no fighter however good he is, is gonna sell tickets and cross-over if he has a low profile and has been shielded from the general public, imagine some of the past greats in this era and climate of little coverage no way would they be has big, promoters are putting to much emphasise on the 0 which then comes back to haunt them and the fighters, if they get beat then they are discarded and become damaged goods and lose their selling point.

another problem as a result is that new fans are not being added to carry the torch, the boxing fanbase is stagnating because even though there's plenty of interest that potential base is not being tapped into, boxing must be the only sport where its biggest events (showcase to add new fans) are targeted to such a limited audience, I can see a future where there's plenty of world class talent but fighters who should be household names are not even household names in their own kitcken and fighting in abscurity. ask yourselves this, whats ray leonard without ABC? who's de la hoya without that early publicity, benn/Eubank without ITV? etc

 

Interesting post but personally I reckon that there is just so much talent coming through in this country right now with huys who are really creating a buzz in terms of the following they seem to be getting now too (like Tyson Fury and Tony Jefferies) that I think TV companies will be FORCED into getting there acts together.

 

British boxing is not dying because of a lack of world class fighters, we have pretty much as many as we normally do outside a peak period.

The Internet kills boxing, and also the untrained fan. Football works because the best always play the best and if you lose there is always next week, and at worse next year.

If a fighter loses it could cost a couple of years of career development, if not his career, because the idea of a losing fight, actually helping to improve a fighter, goes over many a fans head. And people wonder why fighters are matched so cautiously?

I remember when many a person here, had glee in their posts because Amir Khan was finished, because he lost a fight, and what was even worse: KO'd!

I tell you what, if the Internet was around in the 80s, Barry McGuigan and Michael Watson would not of made it past Area level, and Bruno would of slit his wrists after Bonecrusher.

Fighters, unlike Football teams need to learn their skills; Amir Khan can not go out and buy Hagler's chin for £30 Million! No he needs to learn how to protect a potential weakness, so he can improve, gradually.

That is going to mean not fighting a Manny Pacquiao (The Barcelona of Boxing), but by fighting the Barrera's and Kotelnik's of this world, so he can improve at a sensible pace so one day he may be ready for a Cotto or Paciquao level fighter.

 

Generally the problems thoughout the sport are not all negative, it might be good for things to collapse and for options to become limited, then all this greed (ppv) might come to an end as promoters and fighters wil be forced to take stock and realise what they need to do and actually start promoting plus people in the business will be forced to come with new innovative, groundbreaking, forward-thinking ideas (super six, i don't think there would've been a time in the last 20 years where you would've got 5 promoters and 6 fighters working together like that) they'll realise they need better marketing and they might also stop putting so much emphasise on the 0.

there's great potential match-ups
there's talent coming through
more fighters taking control of their careers and not getting ripped off

the fact that this great sport with its problems and enemies still has the capacity to capture the imagination. The potential fanbase is huge, the future die-hards are out there but are not being tapped into.

At the end of the day all thats needed is marketable, cross over stars and all these problems with alphabet soup straps, sculdugery and unscrupulousness things that are irreparable some of which were all present throughout the history of the sport even when it was in the top three sports in the US, become largly irrelevent, it way get slightly worse before it gets better but the long term future of the sport is good IMO

 

Don't forget the name Qais Ashfaq.......

 

I wonder how much of the problem was caused back in the nineties when televised boxing moved away from BBC/ITV and onto the pay channels. You went from 15 million watching the big fights to a few hundred thousand. The number of kids who were inspired to take up boxing or even just attend shows therfore dwindled accordingly.