Classic Fans, Who Still Follows the Sport, When did you Stop?

After being a huge boxing fan for more thirty years I went through a 12 to 15 year period where the problems and economics of life got in the way. During that time, I followed the major fights and not much more.

To this day I'm not sure why, but in 2009 the bantamweight foursome of Vic Darchinyan, Joseph Agbeko, Abner Mares and Yohnny Perez got me back into boxing. So the last 14 years have been great and I watch and score fights on a weekly basis.

 

I pretty much stopped watching big-time pro boxing completely around 1974 after being completely absorbed in all aspects of the sport predating that time. I spent 5 years finding myself career-wise and when I figured that out around 1980, boxing had changed so much with all the titles and rating organizations that it was too hard to figure out who were the champions and top contenders so I just stopped following the new fighters. Since 1980, I've probably only seen live two Holyfield fights, two Tyson fights, one Lewis fight, Trinidad de la Hoya, Foreman-Moorer, a few fights of Hagler, Leonard, and Duran, and that's about it. I haven't seen any of the fighters in any division since 2000. I remain focused on the earlier eras, and I became pretty well versed in all aspects of the sport between 1910 and 1970, that is the fighters, the managers, the promoters, and the politics, when I spent 18+ years full-time writing the Jack Hurley trilogy.

I try to limit my comments to the eras on these threads to areas I know something about. That's when I feel I can contribute to the good of the Boxing-Forum-24 order. I try to avoid commenting on later eras so as to not make a fool of myself. So, to those of you who read my posts, just ignore anything I write when I stray into the discussion about modern-day fighters.

I have a large collection of videos and I have seen highlights of some of the modern-era fighters, but nothing that causes me to want to watch any more live boxing action.

 

You never watched Roy Jones or Mayweather fight ?

 

I still follow it and watch what I can, but I can say I don’t follow as passionately as I did previously. History, past fighters etc; I’m as passionate as ever. I never go more than a week without watching an old fight unless I’m on vacation, and I’m always reading something.

I think what’s turned me off the modern scene and the sport we have today is:

Too many belts, not just that, but we’ve got a few extra ones now passed off as “legit” on the form of the “regular” WBA, the WBO. Not only that, we’ve got promoters, managers, fighters taking advantage of all the silly loopholes and ways to win easy titles. It’s a major problem for me that world titles have zero value whatsoever.

The fighters in general, a lot more annoying. Perhaps this is also the social media aspect, but all the sparring on Twitter, fake call outs etc; and the hiding behind their promoters etc; that’s just lame. The fighters just don’t have any true character or aren’t that interesting anymore.

The fans. The current scene fans are the worst of any sport, perhaps any form of entertainment. They don’t respect or know history, hate all but a few fighters, are racist, their guy is a God, ducked by everyone, never lost a close decision, no chance he’s on PED’s yet every fighter they dislike lost every close fight, is on PED’s, is ducking everyone etc; the fans don’t know or discuss the actual action, they just go off their agendas and once their guy loses, either he was cheated or they simply dump him and move onto someone unbeaten. I think the fans, as well as how fragmented things are, are the worst things about boxing.

 

Ahhhhhh....no!

 

This. You can't beat live sport really and my son and nephew can watch all of it.. While I found out that Leonard beat Hagler on Breakfast TV, as it took place in the week, around 4am and I was up for school the next day...and it wasn't on live anyway.

The perfect time to be a fan was probably the 40s, and only if you lived in New York and you could go and watch Beau Jack, Ike Williams, Kid Gavilan etc live in MSG and the like - and there was only 1 champ.

 

I get goosebumps thinkin about watching some of those old fights, not knowing what woudl happen.

 

The only thing that changed for me is getting older. This time 30 years ago, I would have bought Boxing News, Ring, Boxing Illustrated, KO and Boxing Monthly, so I could hardly keep that rate up even if they were still available. I still watch most boxing on TV and attend as few fights a year. Not as passionate as I once was, but that has rekindled a bit now my son and nephew like boxing and MMA (although they like the latter more).

My sister is a huge boxing fan and still watches every bit of boxing on TV and will still stay up or get up at 4am to watch--even though she's in her 40s. I'm just a now and again guy when it comes to that kind of commitment (although I did stay up all night last weekend to watch some fights).

But the thing is, athough I'm not immersed in the scene as I once was, swap Uysk, Inoue, Crawford, et al and put them all in the 1990s (and vice versa) and I'd still be buying the magazines that I did anyway. That wouldn't change...and my habits today wouldn't either.

 

I can't remember watching Roy Jones, even in clip form. I did attend the 2005 Mayweather v. Sharmba Mitchell fight in Portland, OR, but obviously it didn't leave much of an impression since I had forgotten all about it until you asked. The reason I attended that fight was that I had a good friend come up from Sacramento for a visit to Seattle. I don't remember the details, but I think I drove down to Portland and picked him up and we attended the fight and then drove to Seattle afterward. All I remember now about the fight is an impression that Mayweather was elusive and very fast and would be very tough to corner if he wanted to stay away. I don't remember seeing any other Mayweather fights. I remember that we worked our way up into the press section. My friend knows a lot of people, attends a lot of fights, and is very experienced at getting close to the action.

 

Oh. And MMA didn’t exist. It’s interesting that now most of the new generation follow both sports, the fear that Boxing people had about mma taking their place in the market didn’t happen.

 

Interesting. Well, you lived your share of live fights in your day.
Money changed the game though, in my opinion, all the things people complain are linked to money.
I have a little, just a little, issue with the “guys fighting all the time Back in the day and only twice a year today” because in a lot cases, we know that old timers fought basically exibitions between the major fights.
But again, money, the main guys today can afford to fight twice a year and still be rich.

 

Exhibitions might have been the case for elite heavyweights like champions Dempsey, Baer and Louis at the tail end of his career, but the average nuts-and-bolts contender whatever his division had to be fighting real fights all the time to make a living.

 

Yeah, sure, I was thinking more about the well stabilished guys like the ones you mentioned. It bothers me that when guys became champions they had these fights against unknown boxers, like Monzon fighting 3 times guys that nobody knows til the rematch with Nino. But they liked to stay busy

 

I stopped following the sport for most of this and last year, and a little towards the end of 2021. To be frank, there isn't even really a good reason, just a few really bad ones. For instance, in 2021, I was at Joe Gallagher's academy, and between boxing in the morning, talking about boxing in the afternoon and boxing again in the evening, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was watch boxing. The same can be said for the first half of '22, and by the time I damaged my wrist and had to leave the academy, I just wasn't as enthusiastic towards watching as I was before. I'm still not, really. I've kept a loose track of things through Twitter, but basically seen none of the fights. If I'm being completely truthful, I'm pretty sure the last boxing match I watched full stop was Beterbiev vs Yarde.

The bug has come back recently though, I'm sure something will pique my interest. This weekend's heavyweight card has me excited in a way I've not been in a while.

 

I have been making some unarguably emphatic statements on all the biggest and smallest fights since 2015 without even watching any of them. I feel like I'm still nailing it though.