Why does Boxing struggle to get a good coverage/following in England

Reason I ask this is because boxing does very well in the U.S.A, South America and Germany as we all know, boxing is becoming increasingly popular in Asia and yet in England its a sort of niche market sport.

Every time I talk about boxing, I get a poor responce or a complete lack of interest from my mates or whoever I am chatting to at the time. Yet if you talk about football you will be near enough guaranteed a decent responce.

For example if I ask Joe Bloggs 'did you watch thaxton vs murray the other night, what were your thoughts about the stoppage?' i will be asked who the hell are they. Yet if I ask 'did you watch barcelona play majorca' i will be told messi or xavi will have played brilliant, yet this football is played on the continent and the bout of boxing was in England.

I put this all down to the lack of coverage by the media, you only hear of the prospects that have either won a medal or are promoted by a top promoter. Yet you will hear who yeovil town played and who they are interested in signing etc. Its as though boxing is sort of frowned upon by the british public and 'know it all joes' have a bull**** opinion and rubbish the talents of any boxer by comparing them against all time greats which is unbelievably unfair imo.

 

The reason I say this is because I was prizefighter in a hotel in North Wales the other day and this absolute **** of a man was saying Danny Williams is a fat useless ******* and cant punch his way out of a bag, and went on about every contender and how useless they are in comparison to Ali and Tyson.. I proceeded to challenge him about his views and asked which football team he supported in Wales and their best player, and then I compared them to the likes of Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney etc. This bloke looked bemused as I ripped him to shreds.:good

 

It is a shame the way boxing is going it will never return on free to air television again is my view. For the big Sports companies out there they are more interested in football its a no brainer. Then you have promoters out there looking for far too much money for there fighters. Take into account Sky Sports have shown live boxing since they began and had shown a number of top class fights over the years on free to air and PPV. This is a shocker for a company like Sky not to be interested in the Super Six with a English fighter involved is bad for boxing in the UK. Maybe money bags Hennessy was looking for huge amounts for the rights we will never know. Froch is a good fighter who if he was on Sky Box Office would of sold better than on Primetime.
The likes of new stations Primetime if it is not advertised and available to every platform in the UK and Ireland it is a bad move from the promoter involved in this. If you aint got Sky over here you are ****ed to watch this and are left to look at the fight on a dodgy stream.
I was hopefull someone would show highlights of this fight the next day but there will be no chance of that. The bbc have a guide up about the Super Six but no chance of them showing highlights like they did with the England game last week. Boxing has lost its appeal no more boxers who excite the public like in the years gone by. The likes of Eubank , Benn and even Naz were all house hold names before they hit the big time you dont get that anymore and people loved there style of fights.

 

Exactly mate, that was the older generation of itv who aired all the benn and eubank fights. Sky aired lots of fighers in the past like Bruno, Calzaghe (before he went on itv) Hatton, Naz and Lewis. Dont get me wrong friday night fights is decent but like i said only the top/popular prospects will get shown. In comparison to the ones coming through. You have to be A.B.A champ or summat to get coverage when coming through the ranks nowadays.

 

It's a mix of things.

IMHO the Eubank/Watson and Benn/Mclellan tragedies of the early 90s still have an impact. These fights came at a time when crowd trouble was not unusual and as a result boxing got a really bad press for a few years, with serious talk of it being banned etc. It was around this time that Sky took the big names off terrestrial and it never really recovered.

Another aspect is that by and large boxing genuinely is a niche sport. I'm a rugby league fan, and consider RL to be niche in the UK. Yet the sport has combined audiences that blow boxing out of the water. A lot of the arguments I hear from boxing fans about lack of TV/BBC coverage etc. are the same ones I hear from RL fans. I think we just have to accept we're never going to be really mainstream.

 

mcguirpa you have it the nail square on the head mate, but my point is who the **** wants to see bolton vs stoke, when the money for that could have been paid to air froch vs direll on sky?

 

does it get good coverage in scotland/wales and northern ireland compared to england ?

 

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My jobs involves me travelling to various parts of uk, and everytime ive been to wales (3 or 4 times a month) it gets a decent interest but the only interest shown is towards welsh fighters. And in scotland there aint been that much interest unless your watching a local fighter from edinburgh or glasgow, like i say its a national thing. The most interest i have witnessed is in ireland, they really back dunne and rogan, they are so interested about boxing that they followed kenny egan so much that he has quit so has he can lead a normal life. Ireland, Scotland and Wales all show there fighters more interest and sometimes love than we brits imo. In england we are far too cynical and to eager to shoot a lad down after a loss (ala khan fight). This attitude needs to stop and we need to embrace the local lads and fill out venues where they fight and subscribe to primetime ppv and subscribe to sky if need be. All this will no doubt be said in vain but at least i am trying...

 

Is it that bigger in any of those places than it is here? I'm not so sure. Obviously America will do the best with Vegas, New York and being the main boxing country of the world but taking their population into account Im not sure they'd have a bigger percentage of fans than here.

Its just for whatever reason not as popular as other sports, im not sure a lack of coverage is the problem though it is annoying.

 

Mate south america is alight with boxing, germany air ;sturm, klitschko, kessler, valuev, huck etc on rpl and other networks on tv. i was in holland and they showed sturm for free for christ sakes! asia are slowly getting more and more interest in boxing and pac man gets viewed by a country when he fights!

 

We live in a ghastly health and safety, politically correct country where boxing has no place. Christ, I was in Southport for the British fireworks championships over the weekend and they cancelled the final because it was 'too windy' and thus too dangerous!
Plus, boxing is confusing to the man in the street - too many titles, too many weights.

 

I have to say the Irish fans have knocked there good fighters. Take Dunne into the equation he was slated after the Kiko Martinz fight by fans and the media. He came back stronger from it but the fans always came back to watch his next fight. Most knew he had the talent to go far and win a World Title which he did. I expect him to get a good crowd for his comeback fight. Us Irish fans love the sport for what it is and if we have some talented fighters now we will get a better chance of seeing them live in Ireland. Since Dunne came home from the US most of his fights have been shown on RTE and fans flocked to watch them. I think that some English promotors look at the likes of Dunnes fights and see the crowds and say how the **** is he getting those numbers.

 

Wasnt Froch vs Pascal on itv prime-time (not the channel!) on a Saturday night? if i remember correctly any ideas what sort of figures it got?

 

Your correct mate he won the world title and his first defence wasnt even shown!!! I know the figures were very high for boxing, but it wasnt as high as Calzaghe vs Lacy.