The Decline of Boxing

They were indeed...I listened to Ali vs Liston 2 on the radio....couldn't believe what I was hearing...it was confusing enough to watch it ,...never mind listening to it. I remember the announcer saying...."Liston is on his knees"....it was just too much..

 

When I was a kid on a big fight night I tuned in to the local country music station. They would run round by round reports of the big fights from the wire services. I experienced Duran-Leonard, Holmes-Ali, Leonard-Hearns, and Holmes-****ey that way. It was incredibly exciting just WAITING for another round to come in.

 

I can confirm categorically that the Ali-Frazier 1 fight was blacked out on radio in the United States. There was coverage of it but it was not a live radio call. After each round ended summaries were read from written reports provided by the AP, UPI, and Reuters. These summaries read over the air were limited by court order to no more than 50 words. Every few minutes Van Patrick and Hal King (who were reading the coverage) state that they were reporting from a New York studio, not the fight. However the live radio call was broadcasted internationally to several countries outside of the United States with Tim Ryan doing the call.

A similar thing happened when Marciano-Lastarza 2 was blacked out from the radio. Instead of live radio coverage a radio announcer in the studio read live ringside reports of the fight as they came off a tickertape inside the studio.

 

Im wondering if Furys win will be seen as further evidence of boxings decline...

... or the beginning of a new, more exciting era (at least as far as the heavyweights go)?

 

Saturday's fight if you can call it that finally highlighted how inept these larger fighters have become. No effort is made to learn the sport of boxing. Instead just get as big and sloppy as can be. We now live in an era where Hwt amateurs mascaraed as pro fighters.

 

i'm conflicted on that.

on one hand you could make a real good boxer out of things neither fury or wilder seem to have.

on the other hand we have a new champion with decent footwork who switch hits, puts his hands behind his back against one of the biggest punchers going and then sings ****ty karaoke in the ring afterwards and a beltholder who is in great shape, punches hard and has vulnerabilities that make for exciting fights.

it's not all bad imo and both can still improve.

 

I love the 50's.

 

While the first bout between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali was taking place, I was listening to reports about it on the radio. As a senior in high school, I couldn't afford to shell out fifteen dollars to see the bout on closed-circuit television at a local movie theater. But I later saw the other two bouts between Frazier and Ali on closed-circuit television.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Surely this can't be right?

 

And so do I spinner long for those days.As I have posted before in the 1940s, there was at least one boxing show every night of the week
[sans Sunday] in the NYC area and Metropolitan area. We would go to such boxing arena's as Ridgewood Grove, Broadway Arena, St Nicholas Arena, Dexter Park, Sunnyside Arena, Ft. Hamilton, Queensborough Arena, Coney Island Velodrome,and other boxing venues culminating with every Friday nights at the old venerable MSG
where we would see the greatest fighters in the world perform for
$1.50...The famous Golden Gloves fighters of those days were so numerous that at the annual Finals bouts there were THREE rings performing at the same time. And then there was Stillman's Gym where I would go every Saturday and free weekdays and watch the greatest fighters in the world do their thing ,and I would rub shoulders with ex champions, show people, mob figures, politicians and all for 50 cents...Sadly what killed those halcyon days was free television where a man can sip a brew and watch these fighters perform from the comfort of their home. All the smaller local boxing arena's closed down and took away a living and experience the young boxers needed to earn a living and improve their boxing skills by FIGHTING often...To say that today in the USA there are more fighters than in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s defies logic...Pure and simple...

 

Has anyone ever claimed that?

 

And that's why the thread should be titled "The Decline of USA Boxing"..

 

:good

 

Boxing has been around for thousands of years. Literally. Its like religion and prostitution. Don't be so arrogant to think it will die in you're life time or even 10 generations of your ascendants lifetime

 

Wow. Huddling around a box to listen to some guy describe a fight sounds way better than watching almost any fight on the globe live on my computer.