By nature of the business, boxing cannibilize's itself.

Boxing will be a lot better once it gets rid of Haymon & Mayweather.

Divisive, blood-sucking POSs

They are the major problem, they have split the sport in two since 2009.

It was never this bad before.

 

I agree with a fair bit of what you said except:

Yeah, the blue chip prospects would have a blemish or two on their record. Real fans wouldn't and don't care.

Stars would still be created -- it would just mean de-emphasizing the perfect record and emphasizing other things (skills, talent or excitement).

 

Sorry too tell you this but they will both be in the picture for another year. Number 50 is next year.

 

Spot on.

I don't know why scheduling a bunch of noncompetitive fights is 'growing the business'. Even if that's true it is not a model i want to support.

 

If the best fought the best all would be considered bums...

 

The reason why so many hate on the Floyd vs Berto fight at the moment is because it sums up a whole lot of things that's wrong with boxing today.

1. The fight being expensive PPV, while this isn't a special demanded fight at all.
2. The #1 P4P being able to pick who and when to fight himself, instead of fighting the best available opponent at the time.
3. Not many people will be able to see the best fighters because the way boxing works at the moment, so it won't inspire youngsters to pick up the sport.
4. Fighters making the weirdest excuses why fight or not fight a particular opponent, while reversing the same excuse in one of their next fights without blinking.
5. The roster being split in different fractions. He can not fight him because he has a contract with him/them. Leaving the sport void of the best fighters facing eachother and even preventing some to ever getting hold of lineal title because they're kept "in the family".
6. Fighters not fighting the most lucrative fights but the ones that have the best risk/reward ratio. Floyd could earn much more fighting a bigger name, but then there's a chance he might lose.

These are problems that we didn't had in the past or at least much less. And trump the poisoness effect the boxfan has on the sport because of their dismissing of fighters or their reactions if one of them loses.
Look at what the current Eastern European and Asian fighters brought to the sport. Much less fear of losing, exciting fights and the trend of fastpasing talent.
Then they get hated for it because the fans of the ones that do the opposite see the difference, get their mirror image reflected and want them to go away

 

Oh I know, they'll hang around like a bad smell.

 

Untrue. Sucj is the mish-mash, disjointed nature of the boxing industry ss a whole that no one is inherently trying to grow boxing by growing themselves. It might be a fortunate offshoot of that but none of the promoters, managers, alphabet orgs, fighters Re looking out for boxing as a whole. They want what they csn get from boxing, and their actions are eveident of that. And who can blame them? They're in it for money. People need to realize that the sport of boxing shouldn't be confused with he business of boxing.

That said, losses in themselves shouldn't be a problem in the sport, and they aren't for the most part. They're a problem for the business. The 0 is a marketing tool. Losses are an impediment to future endeavors.

But the business of boxing is the enemy of sport boxing.

To me, PPV is slowly strangling the sport. It may get the big dogs their money, but it compartmentalizes the fanbase, and ensure that fewer and fewer new fans are generated.

 

I agree that promoting is harder than it looks, but we need to get over this bs where you have to have an '0' to be a star. A loss doesn't mean anything if you look good and fought the best, it's bound to happen

Whenever boxing was in its golden age, the best were boxing the best, and no one was undefeated. Nowadays 'champions' are literally fighting teachers and even chipendale strippers to retain their 0, this is what's killing our sport

 

1. Agreed. But PBC tries to give people free boxing and they continue to complain about it.

2. Nothing new though, Ali fought Wepner after Foreman. I don't think tune ups are what's killing boxing today, I think if top fighters fought more often it would solve this problem.

3 Not true at all. With a thing like Youtube people see boxing videos all the time. And because of the media people still hear about boxers and when they do they can just look up a video. And again PBC is trying to make this better.

4. Wouldn't say this one is destroying the sport. Excuses like this have existed for a long time in boxing.

5. Definetely agree with this one, something needs to change with this. At least to make it easier for fighters to fight others fromdifferent networks easier.

6. Again not much new here(Leonard-Pryor anyone?), but I agree that in todays age partly because of Floyd this is more the case. As time goes on I see this problem lessening though.

 

by who though? If a good fighter loses to another good fighter, but challenges himself, fights hard...would YOU think: "that guy is a bum, don't want to see him again" ?

I don't think you would and I don't know any actual boxing fan that feels that way either.

And I don't mean that right off the bat prospects should be put in deep water -- obviously there is an adjustment phase to the progame, the pace, the number of rounds.

But after a while they should be fighting OTHER GUYS (read: quality prospects) like themselves, not "no hopers" and "ham n' eggers".