We have $100 PPV's in a poor mans sport

I blame don king for the ppv craze and feeding his greed off the popularity of Ali. I dont pay for ppv, I pay enough for television, hbo, showtime, espn.

It use to be a hard way to make a living, its still dangerous. but these guys fight once maybe twice a year for a million bucks a fight. not bad.

so I wont pay another red cent.

 

Correct. The boxers may come from the end of the line but audiences who pays PPV can afford it.

 

I get the argument but you could also view PPV as a method of transferring wealth from middle class tv watching home owners to working class boxers. Something Marx probably foresaw and maybe on that note I can persuade some clueless twat in a university somewhere to fund my research project....

 

Reckon it's actually a very interesting question from a historical perspective.

In the UK boxing starts as an upper-lower class mixing affair. Champions not only mixed and rub shoulders with lords and monarchs, but also the first soft gloves used in England were often used for sparring nobelity. So that you could show your lord your power without disfiguring his nobel looks with your working class digits.

In the US boxing has a few competing origin stories most of which center around Tom Molyneaux. Either boxing started as a slave vs slave sport with at best whites betting on which slave would win. Or it started as a means for slaves and former slaves to make a living in European nations like England. Either way our first fight is our former slave vs their nobel sparring champion Tom Cribb. Plenty of historians note Molyneaux but claim he's off in his own time and American boxing does start until Tom Hyer. That's just fine, Tom Hyer is a rough and tumble fighter. Something so far removed from what the English called boxing it still isn't considered boxing but rather a weird and barbaric spin-off created by the Dixie south. R&T has no rules, you could be in a bar and someone come up behind you and cut your balls off, you just lost a rough and tumble match. They were rarely organized, and not something the American upper class was into. In fact at the time the upper class was trying to keep boxing out of the states and regarded it as a violent and barbaric european import due to european immigration.

So no matter how you cut it the origins of the two states have a different outlook. One comes from about as high class a working class man can possibly achieve, they're connected to nobelity, while the other comes from slaves and frustrated farmer getting drunk and plucking one another's eyes out.

I'd say to this day how we see the sport is a bit different. I really don't understand what folks are talking about when they talk about the nobel aspects.....to me boxing is still very much a Spartan war tactic.

 

It’s a working man’s sport. A poor man’s sport. A sport for those who need to fight for a living. A sport that has been hijacked by wealthy silver spoon upper class tossers like Edward Hearn.

 

@tinman You're always crying about dumb ****, go get yourself some heart you tincan. Don't buy the ppv and don't worry about wut others do with their money. It's that simple, stick to watching boxing on YouTube you cheapskate.

 

I'm interested as well. Surely someone can drop some knowledge.