Years you could say Boxing was the most popular sport in America?

I can’t single out specific years but I think generally speaking boxing was a very popular sport in America from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. After that point it saw a steady decline in interest. Being the heavyweight champion of the world during those years meant that you were instantly one of the most or in some cases THEE most haled athlete in all of sports. Today most people don’t even know who that is

 

The 80s, great as they were, did away with all that.

 

Why do you think that is? The 80s I mean

 

I don’t know that there’s a time when it was the No. 1 sport … maybe in Dempsey’s day?

Baseball was most popular for the longest and then with the advent of television football took over. As the movie said, the NFL owns a day of the week.

But as far as boxing, the 1980s was a period where two big stars exited the stage — Muhammad Ali’s day had passed and Sugar Ray Leonard, who became the next big thing, had his career cut short (interrupted it turned out) by a detached retina.

Then along that decade a few other things started to happen — network television, which used to televise fights all weekend across ABC, CBS and NBC — began to get out of the boxing business. Probably the death of Deuk Koo Kim played the biggest part in that, with the TV powers not wanting someone killed live on their airwaves being a factor in withdrawing from the sport.

Also along came HBO, which made it so that the top fighters and top fights were no longer things to watch on your free TV, but you had to not only have cable but then be willing to pay a premium channel fee on top of that. And that meant boxing had a loyal but shrinking fan base that made it harder to create new stars … at least ones who were followed widely.

There’s more, but those things were big factors. And there were certainly spikes in interest with Mike Tyson and De la Hoya and Mayweather, but it really starts becoming more and more of a one-giant-shining-star sport with less and less spillover for other fighters to share in the limelight.

 

Any years you like. I would have thought all the posters here would have realised something doesn't have to be true to say it.

 

Thanks for the explanations

 

It was biggest during the 20's when Dempsey was king, but even then it was second to baseball. Dempsey and Ruth were the two first sports superstars

 

They ran a poll in 1928 in regard to America's most popular athlete and Dempsey more than doubled Babe Ruth's votes. Dempsey was so popular that he made more than some entire MLB teams did. I don't know if that made the sport bigger than baseball, but you're right, the 1920s had to have been its peak. No boxer has been a greater cultural icon relative to their time than Dempsey.

 

In the 20s and up to WW2 I'm guessing that the second biggest sport was horse racing rather than baseball. There's something that was perhaps more popular than boxing was and fell off harder.

I would say that a boxer has been the most popular athlete much more often than boxing has been the most popular sport. It wasn't until Klitschko (or maybe Lewis) that there was a HW champion that wasn't known to every man, woman, and child in America.

 

I would expect the peak was during the Great Depression. But as mentioned it was very high from the 20s through to the TV era of the early 50s.

 

I’d imagine the 1980’s were up there.
SRR, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, Curry etc. Then the emergence of Mike Tyson.
I’m probably slightly biased, because that was when I got into boxing, so it will always live in the memory.

 

Perhaps today we’ll see a resurgence with all the buzz these YouTubers are creating. As for the OP I hope it turns out to be this era coming but I do believe the height via nothing more then a very slightly educated guess is Tyson’s peak based on the fact seemingly everyone in the western world knows the name Tyson.

 

That is it, I too have a bias for that era, but as you elude to, it is a popular, but far from the most popular era of the sport in the States. Indeed I doubt any sport will ever have the cultural hold of the country, that boxing had in that 1920s to early 50s period.

 

The 20s


In the 40s joe Louis was basically the most popular person in the world after schmeling 2. So that’s some thing I guess.