After the awful show put up by mainly Sprott on Saturday night ITV, is now time to look to pro wrestling/MMA to improve the entertainment standards of the sport? Is it time to 'fix' a popular fighters in place who can help the image of the sport and make sure that when boxing is on prime time TV it gives value for money?
I thought the problem was quite the opposite: that there were too many pre-arranged fights, dodged mandatories and too much of a building up of popular fighters against unequal competititon.
The problem is popular fighters built up on unequal opposition get found out at a level, maybe that needs to change. Take Bruno/Whitherspoon in 86, there was (with hindsight) virtually no benefit to boxing and indeed Whitherspoon, in Tim winning that fight. Surely it would been the intrests of the vast majority to manipulate a Tyson/Bruno match in August 87, rather than Tyson/Tucker?
Going into the bouts they were all matched extremely well. It just so happened ONE fight wasn't legendary. Cook-Luaveno, Khan-Limond and Pryce-Small were good fights.
But sadly that fight was on live on ITV, and spoiled the entire show, the pub I was in, had little respect for boxing post Skelton/SprottII and ruined all the hard work Limond and Khan had put in. Something needs to be done to make sure all big TV fights are entertaining enough.
I agree fights that get on ITV need to be entertaining. Sprott didn't want to fight unfortunately. He was passive and clowning. This is where you need good matchmakers who understand how to make good fights.
And good TV execs who know when a contest isn't worthy of pretty much prime time billing? ITV have the final say in what goes on at what time.
I didnt even watch the heavyweeight fight last night an im sposed to be a hardcore boxing anorak..i knew it was going to be **** from the first 30 seconds and wasnt in the mood after watching khan and Limond go at it, which was a terriffic scrap by the way! Why they decided to even put skelton-sprott fight on live ITV1 is beyong me, especially when we had a British guy fighting for a World title on the card, which wasnt a bad bout in itself... but that was hidden on itv4.
