The Holyfield fight really capped it for me. Once a major part of the heavyweight division, no he WAS the heavyweight division for ages, and now reduced to getting crumbled like that. Naaa, it's gone down hill this sport.
It's a circus show with extremely careful matchmaking, manufactured careers, false narrative creation... There has always been elements of this in boxing but Canelo and Mayweather have further popularised this and taken it to the extreme. Canelo's extensive card stacking, judge buying and match fixing for example just makes boxing not worth watching.. Then the narrative is created that he is some special fighter and the fans suck it in and regurgitate it like morons. All the while Canelo jumps weights and CLEARLY cherrypicks, robs fighters, is obviously juiced to the gills and fixes fights (Kovalev). Boxing really has become a joke now (it has been for a while) and its a business all about conning/manipulating naive fans and manufacturing "p4p no. 1" fighters by cherrypicking and card stacking. I don't know what's more face palm worthy , the boxing business conning fans or the fans blindly believing it and having the cheek to call others casuals.
I think Nonito Donaire (at this moment) is the Last of the Mohicans. I got a feeling that Mayweather vs Tenshin REALLY kicked off the whole boxing meets MMA Freakshows and then COVID-19 finished off what was left of the The BWWH (The Boxing World Without HBO). There's two positives at the Holyfield farce: 1) At least he got some decent money for his trouble 2) We now know it's not all fake, Holyfield would NEVER EVER take a dive for money. De La Hoya and others beware, you CAN be humiliated in this kinda Crossover Circus. Wouldn't be surprised if Jake Paul makes the cover of Ring Mag :-D
The only thing left now is a real casualty / life threathening injury during a Fite/Triller event with the stoned commentators talking all kinda ****, not sure what da hell is happening. Donald Trump for f$$$ sake!!
i started watching way less and taking less intrest a couple of years back i love my sport but not the business fighters coming through im young im hungry blah blah for the fans few years later and watching a lot of floyd and they be like im a business man money this i dont want him to get paid that the old timers are shaking there heads in embarrassment
I’m getting to that point as well. Boxing’s in the loo at this point. One of my main gripes is that skilled prospects don’t fight often anymore. Mike Tyson fought once every 2 weeks on his way up. Tommy Morrison fought 20 times in his first year as a pro. Even Wlad fought something like 27 times in his first 2 years as a pro. This used to be the norm. Now guys like Hrgovic and Yoka fight once or twice a year.
There will be more off these triller cards and other promotions popping up with circus matches, expect these mma fighters to continue the trend of calling out and fighting well past thier prime fighters with a name.
Oh it is, I agree. It's marginalized hugely now with the majority of shows being on some form of PPV platform with people paying for farcical shows like last night. The Paul brother, the likes of ODLH, Haye, Mayweather coming out of retirement is helping flush things down the toilet. Reading that a near 60 year old Holyfield was in the ring and being battered just sums things up. These recent fights are making things even more mediocre. Aside from Fury - Wilder and to a point Joshua - Usyk I can't really think of much out there that really grabs my interest....and I used to live Boxing through and through.
As a credible sport I somewhat agree. Boxing is more a capitalist dream type circus now. But there's still good competitive fights to watch. And I still enjoy watching boxing.
