Boxing used to be one of the biggest sports in the world, everyone knew the champions and selling out stadiums of up to a 100,000 people in the USA wasn’t unusual. There was boxing in every town in the UK with regular shows being put on not like today where we are lucky to have one every five years.
Boxing as a sport hit its high point and has been on a steady decline ever since, this isn’t purely because people have gone off boxing its more that boxing has hurt itself with its practices over the years. Putting the biggest events behind pay walls and expecting new fans to watch is a terrible idea long term. How are people supposed to get into the sport if the best events are locked away? how are people supposed to be inspired to pick the sport up if they can’t watch the greats because they have to pay? The shining examples of how good boxing can be are hidden away from the general public and overtime people have stopped caring. Imagine if you had to pay to watch the super bowl or the NBA finals? what about the world cup in football? This wouldn’t be accepted by fans and like boxing would see people turn away so why is it that promoters are hell bent on putting PPVs on? The answer to all these questions is simple and a bit sad, Money. Short term this makes the boxers and the promoters more money but long term it will hurt boxers in the future and also hurts boxing as a sport as is already being shown today where boxing is miles behind Basketball and other sports in terms of popularity.
As boxing fans we want the sport we love to thrive and while we can’t make boxing grow as individuals we can help as a group if we all do our part. One of the biggest ways that a fan can help boxing is by going to small local shows and supporting the grassroots of the sport. This is great because you get too see local boxing talent at a much cheaper price than the big shows and you also help grow boxing in your community. Over the years we’ve seen less and less of these club level shows be put on and this hurts the boxers because unless you were a great amateur you won’t get on to the big tv shows so with the small amount of low level shows its hard to get fights.
Another simple way and something you probably already do is talking about boxing, discussing upcoming fights with co-workers or just online. Like most things they get more popular the more people mention it and it gets it out there. You’d be surprised how much this can help as i’ve often found that until I bring up a fight thats happening at the weekend people had no idea it was on. Unless its a mega fight most people will have no idea about an up coming fight but if you mention it and talk boxing to people they’ll remember and watch. It’s not that people actively choose to not watch boxing its more that they just don’t know its happening because its not promoted properly unless its a massive PPV.
The final way might sound like a weird one but when I explain it’ll make sense. Don’t buy PPV’s that you don’t think are worth it just because you want to watch some boxing. Promoters have slowly been putting more and more fights on PPV and unless people stop paying for them they won’t stop. This further hurts the sport because even more fights are being hidden and it also allows the best fighters to avoid each other because they know they can make good money fighting people they should beat. If the PPV numbers are low they’ll stop putting those sort of fights behind pay walls and everyone wins.
These are just a few small things we can do as fans to help boxing grow and not carry on declining into an irrelevant sport. Obviously if boxing is going to grow again its the people at the top with the money that need to make changes to how they run their cards and put more promotion into the sport instead of squeezing it for every penny they can. It’s sad and the fans shouldn’t have to try and save the sport and thats why the things i’ve said you can do mostly help the people at the bottom of the sport. We’ll have too see if these business men at the top really do care about boxing like they say they do or if they care more about how rich boxing can make their pockets.
Boxing Fulcrum 