Dear God, Grant Me An American Heavyweight

Thats why david haye is coming to assault the heavyweight ranks.

 

Unlucky Yanks, the next big thing at Heavy is British.

You have one good prospect in that kid at cruiser though, he will be a good heavy.

 

Your there ripping into the foreign heavyweights, and fair enough, they suck, but your forgetting one thing. There aren't any Americans as good as these so called **** heavyweights out there! Oleg Maskeav beats just about any American prospect even though he's ****ed and ancient.

I just think that America's time as a great boxing nation is over. Boxing is a european sport now, you lot have MMA and UFC instead. I'm quite happy for that to be the case, being british, although I will miss having some of the entertaining american fighters around.

 

I don't think it so much as a european sport now. More a world sport. Countries like Puerto Rico, Mexico and Cuba are churning out champions aswell.

 

Good point, I overlooked latin america.

However, in terms of which area has the biggest market for boxing, where the viewing figures and PPV money will come from, I still see europe as the future. HBO make more money staging heavyweight title fights in Germany than they do in the USA, the german PPV market is very lucrative. If you also factor in the success of British fighters, and the fact that Boxing is now a mainstream sport in the UK once again, you could see how there is more potential for profit in the European market than there is in the US market. I mean 50,000 for Calzaghe - Kessler? 20,000 for Haye - Macc? 900,000 PPV buys in the UK alone for Hatton - Mayweather. 7 million people watching Amir Khan on ITV? Those numbers tell a big story. The same is true in continental europe, lest we forget Sven Ottke would get 15million people watching him in Germany.

The demand for boxing in the US has been replaced by demand for MMA, so instead the big networks will follow the money and head to europe. This is already certainly true in the Heavyweight division, where all the best fighters are European, and any non-european is the exception these days. This trend will continue over time and sooner or later include the lower weight divisions.

I dont say I like this, I'm not going to get all nationalistic about it, because American fighters have been the lifesblood of the sport for over 100 years and without them we are going to lose a lot of the glamour from boxing, but boxing will never die it will adapt to survive, and the adaptation in this case means crossing the atlantic.

 

Other than the granite chin, sounds like Haye's potential. Does he HAVE to be American?

 

I would say david haye looks alot more exciting than anything the usa can come up with.

 

In Fairness, Klitschko doesn't normally fight as cynically as he did against Ibragimov, I remember his blasting the **** out of plenty of guys in the past.

But I think it has to do with the former Soviet eastern bloc fighting style, and the over-reliance on point scoring and the one-two. Luckily there are British fighters out there, who dont tend to do this, who act as an antidote. Just as someone from the gyms of Philly or Detroit will have a style that reflects their environment, which will be different to a fighter who's trained in LA or Tijuana or Miami, Europe has its own difference is style based on where you go. Not all european boxers fight like Klitschko or Ottke, only former commie ones do.

 

I think it all comes down to psychology. An American fighter lives in the ring, while a European fighter participates in a sports event. Americans talk about the streets and being tough while Europeans talk about training regime. As a result you get American fighters who are larger than life characters ready to die in the ring and blowing up between fights. American fighters like this will make for a great show but will lose to a calculating disciplined European fighter who is never out of shape. Occasionally there are exceptions, like Brewster Krasniqi, only to get a nail in the coffin by Brewster - Wlad II.

Fights like Gatti-Ward would never happen in Europe. But Europe has other types of fight which are just as exciting to watch for those who enjoy the finer side of the sweet science. Ulrich - Barashian comes to mind.

 

Never heard of nigel been or chris eubank.

 

Jamie Moore - Matthew Macklin was like Ward - Gatti. Your talking ****.