Dubois Vs Joyce / Whyte Vs Povetkin unlikely to go ahead

I saw a post on Twitter today, and I'm not sure if I should be terrified or sort of proud of the British Spirit.. it went like this..

Italy - Total Lockdown.
US - National Emergency, No EU travel.
China - Total Lockdown.

And it went on with other countries with all schools and Universities closed, no mass gatherings and then..


UK - Cancelled Football for 3 weeks.



.. actually I think I should be terrified.

 

It’s not a question of not believing the experts; more that you wonder why our experts are so different to everyone else’s!

To be fair yesterday seemed to be the point where we broadly fell in line with everywhere else. The stated length of cancellation is just to give some time as to what happens next. People being asked to work from home for example are being told to take it a week or two at a time and then we’ll reassess. The reality is they’ll be working from home for two or three months.

 

But I’m fairly certain it won’t be a prolonged period. The peak will almost certainly be in ten to fourteen weeks. Then it’ll reduce. It’s going to be very weird but it’s almost certainly not the end of the world.

With that in mind I’m fairly certain they’ll cancel the Euros and play the rest of the season over the summer.

 

Yeah that's the point where things really began to spread but they are unsure about of where it originated.

 

I’m pretty confident that the fight will go ahead. However I can 100% guarantee you that it won’t be on the scheduled date.

 

The interesting thing to note about the current situation is how little the TV companies are paying the boxing promotions both here in the US compared to other sports.

The UFC and WWE (I know it’s not a real sport) earn so much money from their TV rights deals that they are continuing with their scheduled shows with no fans in attendance. Hearn and other promoters have made it clear that the same won’t happen with boxing, and that ticket sales are vital to their business model unlike the other brands.

 

Not sure it's as simple as that. It's my understanding that UFC have kept a tighter control on the amounts they pay their fighters. Their contracts may be different in other ways also. Obviously if their costs are lower then the TV money could be sufficient even if it's comparable or even less than the amount paid for boxing?

 

The $1.5bn over five years they are getting from ESPN is in a totally different stratosphere to what Sky are paying Matchroom.

With the exception of Canelo, Joshua and a few others, the biggest stars in the UFC are doing much better financially in comparison to boxers with a similar stature than they were a decade ago.

 

The thing is they cannot just finish seasons off in the summer because players are out of contract from May when the season ends. You think players are just going to play games with no contract in place, no insurance cover etc? The only logical thing to do is void leagues, split prize money amongst all clubs in the same division and just use current standings for European competition qualification. As a side the financial implications for clubs unable to gain promotion etc would be severe but this transcends football.

I agree that the Euros will clearly be postponed to next year along with the Olympics.

Also you keep saying “it’s not the end of the world”. For whom? Old and sick people: for them it might genuinely be the end of the world. Sporting clubs and companies will literally go bust without day-to-day income and people will lose their jobs. For many it will (not literally of course) feel like the end of the world.

 

How is that different to normal ?
Old and sick people always have died.
There was never a time when old people were generally not going to die. They drop like flies, constantly.

 

There are only 69 players who will be out of contract in the Premier League going into July. That equates to three or four players per team. Even if none of those players were able to agree a small contract extension for a couple of months in order to resolve the season, the teams would still very obviously be able to put a side out if the time allowed. Which, based on every prediction about the peak and then downturn in the virus, seems likely.

This obviously does transcend sport, but that's not a reason to say the only choice is to kill the season off. At some stage this will have been resolved. Sport will start again. If it can be resolved over the summer it will, but an obvious point that doesn't seem to have been mentioned too much is not ending this season, but cancelling the 20/21 season. Let's say we couldn't start any football again until Christmas. This is far later than expected but lets run with it as a worst case scenario. You can't play next season in the space of four and a half months. Surely at that stage you just finish the current one?

I just don't see the contract issue being as big an issue as the inevitable legal issues put forward by the likes of West Brom and Leeds. Forget about them as clubs for a minute and just think of these as a business. If Leeds make the case that their season could be completed over the summer but wasn't and it cost them X millions, that will be a serious legal consideration.

 

El Gateaux Dull Boy Pakora willing to fight Usyk behind closed doors - just buy your tickets, don't turn up and give him his wonga. The same with pay per pudding, just buy and don't watch to ensure he gets paid his pudding millions.

[url]https://www.boxingnews24.com/2020/03/dereck-chisora-willing-to-fight-oleksandr-usyk-behind-closed-doors-without-fans/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter[/url]

 

The Health of people comes first mate - that is more important than any sporting event although I am gutted.

The season is over.

 

I think the way we talk about this (as a society, not on here obviously) will be important.

If people keep talking in terms of disaster, people will react like it is a disaster. We are already seeing some of this with panic buying. It's important that this doesn't turn into mass looting.

Take the point about clubs going under raised above. The scientific experts have repeatedly stated we are in the region of ten to fourteen weeks away from the peak, at which point the downward curve kicks in. So in a reasonable scenario we will be over this and back to a scenario we are broadly in today in twenty-two/twenty-four weeks but with cases dropping rather than increasing. That takes us to mid August.

Take a club at random; Sunderland. They have three remaining home fixtures this season. So lets say on average English clubs will miss out on three, four or five home fixtures. Is that going to seriously run any significant number of them into the ground?

 

Sorry, I was thinking more of US fighters. Yes, absolutely UFC fighters in US will be doing better than UK boxers, but then it's a much bigger tv market over there. Hence the UK fighters move to fight on Matchroom USA / DAZN cards.