When did you feel the popularity of boxing started to decline?

when Floyd came around it made it about money and not about the great sport anymore. And then those clones of Floyd came around like Broner, who thought he was Floyd, but he obviously was not.

 

If you pick up any boxing magazines from the 1970s,1980s...they are talking of a serious decline in boxing...a lack of stars outside a handful of guys...so this kind of thinking has been around for a long time...

However I think the actual decline set in around the late 2000s-very early 2010"s...the factors were:

1) Long term decline of American HW powerbase and lack of interest in Klitchkos dour brand and perception of them as unrelateable (neither white nor black-sadly such things always mattered in the HW division and America ..plus a lack of competition during their era and a boring style overall.

2) The Long term decline of brands which built up a fighters career in a episodic fashion so you could follow a fighters career and have a real interest in the said fighters ups and downs....eg HW Explosion, traditional BBC style fight shows in the 1980"s... ABC/NBC in the 19 80"s....ESPN Friday Night Fights.....Eurosport during 1995-2005 under Steve Holdsworth were masters of the soap opera boxing format of episodic shows showing a bunch of fighters journeys...an example being they covered sven ottke"s entire career...he wasnt the most exciting fighter but you had interest in how he would do against different fighted...this format was small potatoes and non ppv fish but they enabled u to follow a fighters career.

3) If the Alphabet soup of 1980s/1990s didnt kill the "sport" the explosion of multi soup titles eg Super,Interim,Silver,Regular WBA Middleweight champ has killed it...every fight between two middling non entities has a world title or lavish sounding title attached to it.......consequently previously prestigious national titles mean nothing any more and titles in general are demeaned...and the public eventually realises its a crick of shitt.

4) The lengthy longwinded tacky ring entrances,grinning army of smiling ring card girls,Michael Buffer style lengthy introductions....mariachi music .what I"d basically call the Bob Arum /Golden Boy template ...have turned off many.......the UFC has a very spartan entrance regimen..which many prefer the concentration focus on the sporting contest..

5)Mediocre yet stats wise world level boxers deciding to follow a Mayweather type once a year fight schedule...eg Amir Khan,George Groves,Billy Saunders...DeGale

All of these things have led boxing to just become a one off event type landscape rather than a sport you can follow.......and it is the casual one off event seeking millenial demographic it caters to....those who have no wish to follow a sport or invest time in a fighters career....so you get...logan paul v ksi.....you get them interested in a Anthony Joshua fight.....so based on the overwhelming success of these "events" and Eddie Hearn has been a master of them in the UK....it all means there has never been as much $ and £ in boxing...but the actual sport and standard is declining...and the promotional ability to create interest in fighters and a division is dying....so its a event "sport"...not an athletic "sport".

One off events can easily be usurped by new events...in other areas...

Mixed Martial Arts seems to have taken over from boxing in excelling in creating this athletic interest...1 world champion...and real interest in regular fights between contenders

Football for all its faults has never left its athletic competitive root...teams play in leagues in regular matches with each other...it isnt a one off event sport...u take an interest in players and teams careers long term

 

Boxing was not mainstream in the 80's, but it was a front page new sport on certain nights.

The popularity deluded in the early 00's as the famous heavyweight retired, and were replaced by fighters from Eastern Europe.

 

Most of them speak english, the language barrier is secondary, the geographic orgin is the real problem, and this goes for Black Europeans too.

 

A schedule for boxing is needed. This is why the super super series does do well.

 

I started to follow boxing in the early 60s... but gradually lost interest in the 70s and 80s, when the best no longer fought the best.

Conteh - Galindez, Cuevas - Palomino, Lopez - Pedroza, Sanchez - Pedroza… so many fights to determine the top dog never happened. Not to mention Leonard waiting several year for Hagler to get old, before he wanted to have anything to do with him. The final straw was Lewis - Bowe never materializing. That was it for me!

But then came the fall of "The Wall", resulting in an explosion of amazing talent over the past couple of decades - which has rekindled my interest. I count myself lucky to be alive in this great era!

 

Late 90s

 

Around early or mid 1960s, the number of boxing bouts held annually, per boxrec, was 1.5-2 times lower than it was in late 1940s-early 1950s. It got back to late 1940s numbers only in early 2000s.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.sport.boxing/26lZKyynE_A

 

I think in America, the decline probably started in the early 1960s. In the 1950s it was still probably the most followed sport except baseball.

There have been some massive American stars in boxing since then, the biggest stars in boxing history probably, but as a sport to be closely followed by full-time fans, it was overtaken by other American sports. In the last 20 years the drop-off has been immense but at the same time Floyd Mayweather Jr. with Manny Pacquiao made hundreds of millions of dollars in a single fight in Las Vegas.

 

This. Tyson was a huge crossover star, no doubt, but the foundation of the sport was gone. People cared about Tyson, but in a circus like way. And, by the time he got to the top, most big cards were either on HBO/Showtime (which not everyone had) or later PPV, so access to even his fights was less than the champs before him.

 

I remember in the summer of ‘88 one of my friend’s father paid $100 to see Spinks lose in 91 seconds. That was a hell of a lot of money back then especially for a blue collar guy like him.

 

Spot on...

Even those 8 man tournaments....Eddie Hearn ran....prizefighter ....were good...tho let down by a low standard of fighter...but the premise was good ...youd see 4 quarter finalists,win...than instantly want to see them against each other....and you would....and end of the night youd have one winner...having witnessed a journey

 

Id agree it has nothing to do with language....and even origins....they just arent marketed right in either the usa or the UK...the UFC makes stars of fighters from remote places like dagestan,chechnia or Guangdong, as they are marketed right and can fight......theres no question some amazing fighters have emerged the last 30 years since the collapse of communism....even Wladimir Klitchko circa 2011 started to develop charisma and excitement(probably having witnessed David Hayes marketing abilities and antics ) and this new charisma and more risk taking in the ring led to two great spectacles in the Fury and AJ fights....so once he began marketing himself right....he went diwn as a v good champion

 

The prestige in the sport was gone, and people like Adrian Broner, did not know who he was, lack of identity.