When looking back at the last decade in boxing its probably safe to say that Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao was the biggest boxing match to take place. Not in terms of attendance though 16,000 people is still a lot but more in terms of how it reached beyond even sports fans. It generated the most money a boxing match ever has and thats purely down to the fight being mainstream and not just boxing fans or even sports fans.
The fight didn’t live up to peoples expectations and I do wonder if this ended up hurting boxing as many people that watched would have turned their backs on boxing after paying money for a fight which most perceived to be boring. Why would they watch more boxing when even the biggest fight of the decade between two of the best boxers to grace the sport was a disappointment. You can’t really blame them for boxing not being where it used to be as its been on a steady decline as other sports took over and grabbed the imagination of the public. In the UK its still a major sport but in the USA its been slowly pushed out by the NFL and the NBA. Even in the UK they don’t really show boxing on national tv after a few boxers were badly injured in front of the entire nation.
This really was a fight that should have happened years earlier but unfortunately we can say that about a lot of big boxing fights recently which shouldn’t be surprising because boxing is more of a business than a sport.
Boxing Fulcrum 