Will heavyweight boxing ever regain its popularity in the USA

Its all about matchups.

If boxing fans start to see the fights that everyone craves for, than it it will definetely grow.

Too much overprotecting these days

 

American fans have short attention spans and have tons of other options for entertainment. The best athletes in America play Football or Basketball. CTE is unfortunately on the minds of liberal Americans. Americans also tend to be fans of people rather than a sport. They idolize someone or hate them and that's what drives viewership.

For boxing, there are no American heavyweight stars to drive attention, and even if there were, they only fight once, maybe twice a year.

As an American, I think most American fans are not very smart and have to have "stars" to worship rather than a sport to entertain them.

 

The best athletes never went into boxing gyms.

 

I think it's for a multitude of different reasons.
Firstly exposure I'm from the UK and was a child in the 80's where we only had 3-5 TV channels and boxing was seen by the masses.
I remember watching the likes of Hagler v Hearn with the whole family it was an event back in the day despite only me and my older brother being boxing fans. So the general public as a whole had a far better awareness of boxers going into the 90's. Once boxing moved over to satelite TV or cable that awareness dropped of as only actual boxing fans continued to follow the sport.
Then we can look at dilution of the product with the adding of the IBF and later the WBO. This in itself diluted what it meant to be a champion as we went from two belts to four and now theres even more nonsense belts. So defining a real champion becomes very difficult as many are happy to sit in there own back yard and defend that one belt.
Thirdly from a US perspective is the evolution of opportunity for black atheletes expanded over time. boxing let's face it is a tough sport that relies on yourself. For many a team sport is going to appeal to many atheletes who aren't natural fighters. In recent decades like with men's tennis has led to people from other countries becoming more successfull as the home grown gene pool has shrunken with people taking different paths to success.
Lastly I don't this boxing has lost to the UFC. There's clearly more money in boxing for the elite stars that cannot be disputed. I think the UFC has some advantages as it's all in house and they can put the fights on that fans want to see. I think there's space for both I follow both despite obviously being a boxing fan for longer. It's just that the focus for the sport has spread to more countries where when I was growing up the focus was very much on the US.
I would also point out is the lack of individuals at the elite level. As with gauging a fighter it depends on who they have faced. the reality is the US at Heavy has been very underwhelming since the Holyfield and Tyson era. There just hasn't been anyone that good since. I never rated Wilder as he'd never faced anyone before facing Fury so I could never be that excited by him as the surrounding competition was also poor.
It can come back but it's timing and having at leat two or three guys at the top level and them actually fighting each other. This era could have been a lot better if more of the top guys had been prepared to take losses and fought each other As it stands we have more questions than we have answers.

 

Tyson and Sampras...

 

Well with this latest woke generation of effete males I could see womens boxing getting bigger than men's. They seem to have more testosterone than what I've seen in these snowflakes.

 

True about americams not supporting EE fighters. Bob Arum I think realises that now, after the 2012 Olympics . he went through a phase of signing loads of them ( Lomachenko, Gvozdyk, Gradovich, Allakverdiev, Mekhonstev, Kavaliauskas, Besputin, etc) But now hes suddenly not signing hardly any of them, which is a shame because they are top fighters who need western promoters for the opportunity to turn pro. Foreign wise - hes focusing on Puerto Rican, Mexican and Irish signings.

Another problem is they don't usually put shows on in places where theres a lot of ex soviets living. Such as Brighton Beach, New York. Surely there must be some arenas near there. And theres a lot of ppl of Ukrainian descent in some places in Canada.

Polish fighters sell well in New Jersey. They need to find somewhere like that for Ukrainians amd Russians.

 

WWE has lost tons of viewers too and why the hell would boxing fans be wrestling fans, the two are completely unconnected.

 

I doubt it. I don't think they'll ever be another boxer as famous as Mike Tyson and George foreman were in the 90s in the u.s.

Boxing isn't as popular, and as a culture we don't have the same unifying pop culture phenomenon we used to. Too much content. In the 90s ppl spent months making references to one movie like silence of the lambs or Austin powers. Nothing lands for very long now even if a mike Tyson showed up and mopped through the division in the same fashion, they wouldn't be able to recreate the 90s

 

There will come another strong and competitive heavyweight division where the best fight the best, consumer demand will make it so that's the case eventually. There are up and down periods for all sports and I feel tennis might have its own resurgence in the US when they have a male star of their own. Naomi Osaka seems to have generated quite a response from the American audience on the female side of things too despite her recent dip in form.

 

Absolutely not. NOW...that is not to say we won't have a popular HW or two.

But it will never be like the HW div in it's heyday, where that ruled boxing and everyone knew who the HW champ was. Will never even reach what it did in the 90's IMO.

 

I feel we ALMOST had that in Deontay. Big, tall, strong, decent looking guy...KOing everyone. But fought scrub after scrub...declined a fight w/ Wlad. And audiences didn't care about him because of that.

DW and his team dropped the ball big time. Guessing they didn't have much faith...just wanted to milk him dry.

 

If Anderson beats Wilder... maybe... yes

 

It's hard for any single thing to be as popular as things were back then as there are so many options. There are more kids watching people play video games these days than people playing sports. The reason you're seeing an uptick in popularity with Jake Paul type stuff is because much of that audience hasn't had much exposure to the real, brutal and true world. Deep in their psyche it's something they're intensely curious about, but not something they're going to explore on their own. It's necessary to have a Jake Paul type of the "virtual world" to lead this fanbase toward the real world of boxing. Many of them will stick around, but to most kids growing up now, boxing is further and further down on the ever growing list of things they care about.

 

he has no class, america wont get behind him.