The Decline of Boxing

Yes..........everyone in this thread is talking about the United States. I thought that was common sense?

Boxing was a premier sport in the USA during the 60's and 70's.
80's and 90's was Tyson fever. Everyone knew the names of Holyfield,Tyson,Bowe etc etc........

Boxing was on the front pages of most sports Magazines.

In fact even during the 90's..............at least 10 of the top 100 paid USA Sports stars were boxers.(Mostly heavyweights)

Today it's only Floyd from the US in terms of making money.

Look at Forbes rankings of highest paid athletes during the 90's.
Foreman,Tyson,Bowe,Holyfield, etc etc ..........Heavyweights.


Now the USA don't give a **** about boxing.

You should worry. The rest of the World cares about soccer.
The World don't need United States support for that.

The World DOES need United States support when it comes to Boxing.
The US is the Mecca of Boxing. Especially Heavyweights. It's not the same when the US isn't interested.

 

You don't judge the popularity of a sport just by numbers.

During the 90's................everyone can list at least 5-9 heavyweights. Any teenager interested in sports knows Holyfield and Tyson.

Now most teenagers in the United States(in fact the vast majority) don't even know the HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION, much less the rest of the top 10.

 

Who cares what the American casual boxing fan thinks? Boxing is a global sport.

 

While looking at newspapers of micro-film in order to find results of boxing shows or simply to do research, I found that there were a little over one thousand professional boxing shows staged in California on an annual basis during the late 1920s. According to the U.S. Census, California had a population of 5,677, 251 during 1930. According to one article that I have read, there was an average of 100 boxing shows on an annual basis in California sixty or seventy years later. This was in a state with a population of about 30 million people.

I have read that the state of New York had about 900 professional boxing shows during 1926. According to another article that I have read, the state had only about 25 during one year within the last two or three decades.

Herb Goldman wrote an article about the boxing activity in New York City during the No-Decision Bout Era or the 1910s. At one point, there were about 30 boxing clubs staging weekly shows in the city. If all of those clubs did stage weekly shows without fail every year, that would be a total of about 1,500 shows taking place in New York City on an annual basis.

Philadelphia also had a large number of boxing clubs staging weekly boxing shows during the first 20 years of the 20th Century. As I recall, the number of such clubs was more than ten in the city.

About 10 or 15 years ago, I read that there were about 1,000 professional boxing shows being staged in the U.S. on annual basis at the time.

- Chuck Johnston

 

This is the source of 80% of the whining regarding the state of boxing today.

I remember similar sentiments being expressed with the Latino explosion in the lower weights.

 

Ali and Frazier's first fight, held at the Garden on March 8, 1971, was nicknamed the "Fight of the Century", due to the tremendous excitement surrounding a bout between two undefeated fighters, each with a legitimate claim as heavyweight champions. Veteran boxing writer John Condon called it "the greatest event I've ever worked on in my life." The bout was broadcast to 35 foreign countries; promoters granted 760 press p***es.[31]

Promoted by Don King, the Thrilla in Manila had a tremendous media following. The fight was shown on closed-circuit television in 380 locations in the United States and broadcast to 68 countries worldwide. Ali was guaranteed $4.5 million against 43% of the gross, while Frazier was guaranteed $2 million against 22%. Ali ended up with about $9 million and Frazier made roughly $5 million.

Admittedly I was under 10 at the time, so I could have selective memory, but this comment on Wikipedia seems to support my memory. I'm also Canadian so I may have thought it was on free TV in the US since it was here.

 

How many boxing matches were staged in Japan, Thailand, The Philippines, Germany, what was Russia and Kazahkstan, Mexico and Argentina in 1930 versus today?

 

or south america, africa etc

boxing is now a global sport

 

below are some 'regretfully' startling stats... this should give you scope of just how far boxing has declined in both talent & 'real' comp!

a sample of 50 of today’s best fighters. They were all current World title holders or recent champions considered to be world cl***. Here were my findings:

• 74% won a world title in their first attempt
• 64% were undefeated going in to their first world title fight
• 79% of those undefeated fighters did not take part in a competitive bout before they fought for a championship
• 27-4 is the average professional record of the best opponent fought prior to a world title fight
• The average total combined record for opponents before a title is 457 Wins and 927 Losses
• 28% face a former or future World Champion before they fight for a world title
• 14% face a top 10 ranked fighter before they fight for a world title
• 46% face a top 25 ranked fighter before their first world title fight

 

Well, it is valid for the the US; but in the free world we enjoyed the glory of free TV already!!!!

I was like 7 years old and I remember staying late in the night with my dad and his pals to watch RITJ, TiM, etc broadcasted in glorious B&W :bbb

 

Chuck, while I agree with you that there are fewer domestic boxing matches today than in decades past, I think it would be better to take the temperature of the sport at an international level rather than city by city. According to Boxrec, there are as many professional fights today as there were in the forties and fifties. As people on this board are so fond of pointing out, Boxrec doesn't have the complete global record and is in fact missing some fights, but I think it should give a general picture of the state of things at the time.

One other factor to consider alongside of your information is the manner in which different cities and venues become popular boxing locales. It might be that there is a surplus of boxing talent, fighters, clubs, and gyms in the area. Another possibility is that a particular promoter has a contract and staging fights in a particular city is part of his business model. When I was looking into the greatest promoters of the twentieth century I couldn't help but notice how regional their affairs were. Even when two major promoters coexisted in the United States at the same time, they would generally have differing zones or spheres of influence. Consequently Mike Jacobs ran things mostly in New York out of Madison Square Garden from 1934-1946. James W. Coffroth made California, specifically San Francisco, the mecca of boxing between 1901 and 1915 because that's where he was from. From the fifties to the seventies George Parnassus worked mostly out of LA, etc. Right now, Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya seem to have a thing for Vegas, but it just as easily could have been Miami.

 

There were enough in Germany for the heavyweight champion to be German.

Boxing has almost always been an international sport and spread rapidly between the world wars.

The old Soviet Union did not have professional boxing, but there was boxing as far back as the 1920's in Argentina, Mexico, The Philippines, and Japan had boxing as least as far back as the 1930's.

How popular? Hard to say at this point, but popular enough for champions or top contenders from Germany, Argentina, Mexico, and the Philippines in either the 1920's or the 1930's.

By the 1950's boxing was booming throughout North and South America,

Africa (champions Alphonse Halimi, Robert Cohen, Hogan Bassey, and Vic Toweel, plus rising star **** Tiger, and contenders Jake Tuli and Roy Ankarah)

Western Europe, Australia, and certain countries in East Asia or off the coast--Japan, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines.

The big difference between now and 50 to 70 years ago is the dropping of the pro ban in Eastern Europe, and in the old Soviet Union,

and perhaps some interest in China, although there was boxing in China prior to 1949.

The increase of pro activity in Asia is somewhat balanced out, I think, by a drop in interest in North America generally and possibly (off what I can tell) Latin America and much of western Europe.

 

Wikipedia lists the nationality of opponents of top fighters, so I looked up some old fighters records to see how widespread their international opposition was--

heavyweights would be more limited because poor nutrition (and also possibly genetics) kept many areas of the world from producing many big men, but here are the nations who produced opposition for

Joe Louis & Max Baer---Norway, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Wales, Mexico, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa
---------------------------------------------------------------------

And the lower weights

Archie Moore---Australia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Belgium, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Uruguay, Trinidad, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Italy

Sandy Saddler---Puerto Rico, Canada, Cuba, the UK, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Panama, Italy, Northern Ireland, Chile, Algeria, France, Japan, the Philippines

Bobo Olson---Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, Estonia, Australia, France, the UK, Cuba, Canada, South Africa, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Italy, Argentina

Carlos Ortiz---France, the UK, Mexico, Italy, Cuba, Japan, the Philippines, Panama, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Guyana, Scotland

Ray Robinson---Puerto Rico, Greece, France, Canada, the Philippines, Cuba, the Netherlands, Germany, Algeria, Belgium, the UK, Spain, Ireland, Nigeria, Mexico, Belize

Nino Benvenuti---Tunisia, Italy, Croatia, France, USA, England, Spain, Germany, Trinidad, Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, Aruba, Brazil, Jamaica, South Korea, Virgin Islands, Japan, Nigeria

my conclusion---boxing was already a world sport, except for the major exception of Asia (and the old Soviet bloc) from at least the 1930's on.

 

Since results of bouts from the past are still being entered on the BoxRec website, I am skeptical of claims that there are as many professional fights today as there were during the 1940s and 1950s.

There are a number of other countries besides the United States which probably had far more bouts on an annual basis fifty or one hundred years ago than at the present time. The United Kingdom (notably England), South Africa, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Philippines, Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Panama certainly had quite a bit of professional boxing activity before 1960.

There must have been a staggering number of bouts taking place in England before World War II. For one thing, there are a very large number of pre-World War II English fighters who had one hundred or more bouts. Could Len Wickwar or George Marsden have had about 465 and about 372 bouts respectively if they were active at the present time? I doubt it.

In regards to the United States, it is hard to find any locale which has had far more professional boxing activity during the last fifty years than during the period before 1960. The only exceptions may be locales which are gambling or vacation resorts, notably Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

- Chuck Johnston

 

The following article indicates that all three Ali-Frazier bouts were on live radio:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...on-the-radio/2011/11/08/gIQAO1c62M_story.html



For some reason the only one I can remember listening on live radio was the first bout. But they definitely were not on live network tv.