Boxing Doesn’t Need To Be Saved - Just Watched

By Jake Donovan (photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank)

Here we go again.

Another big boxing event on the horizon brings about another chorus of cries from the mainstream media asking if this is the one to save the sport.

If we’re to believe the masses, this weekend’s clash between Oscar de la Hoya and Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (Saturday, HBO PPV, 9PM ET/6PM PT) is the first significant event to take place since Floyd Mayweather knocked out Ricky Hatton in the very same arena 52 Saturday’s prior.

Such logic would classify this weekend’s show as the first and only significant event of 2008. At the very least, it’s illogical. To put it blunt, it’s downright ignorant; as they needn’t look any further than the sports they already cover.

With the exception of the National Football League, ratings for professional sports have been on the decline in recent years. Every sport has featured more than their share of memories, but it’s become glaringly obvious that it takes a special hook in order to draw in crowds beyond the diehards.

Major League Baseball fans can most certainly empathize. There weren’t any shortage of stories to be told with this year’s World Series, particularly from the side of the Tampa Bay Rays (nee Devil Rays).

Their first World Series appearance came with their also claiming its first divisional title and first winning season in their 11-year history, all while boasting the second lowest team payroll in 2008 at $43.4 million – or in excess of $160 million less than the 2008 New York Yankees.

The Rays’ season was also a tale of youth being served, with 15 players on the roster not even yet born in 1980, the last time the Phillies won the World Series prior to taking baseball’s top prize in five games this past season. The Phillies’ 2008 W.S. appearance was their first since 1993 – five years before Tampa Bay would field its very first professional baseball team.

But at the end of the day, much as in every other form of entertainment, fans proved that they care less about compelling story lines than are drawn in by instant sex appeal.

Excuses galore were offered for what was the lowest rated World Series for as long as baseball’s been on television – inclement weather, game delays and postponements, etc. But in the end, the story baseball told was the same as every other sport – fans won’t tune in if it’s not a big market team with a storied tradition, no matter how you dress it up.

Proof of that can be found by looking no further than the NBA.

Pro basketball ratings have been on a downward spiral ever since Michael Jordan stopped appearing in the NBA Finals. Even with the bar dramatically lowered for the sake of relative success, it took for the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers to go head to head in the Finals for the first time in 20 years to save the sport from posting record lows in viewership,

The Celtics’ 4-2 series win claimed the storied franchise its league leading 17th championship. Their series against the Lakers marked the 11th time the two franchises met on the sport’s biggest stage, a storyline that was beaten to death by the media. The abused sales pitch proved to be effective, to the tune of a 50% increase in viewership from the previous season, which posted the worst ratings since Nielsen began tracking for the sport in 1974.

It mattered little to fans that the 2007 Finals included the sport’s most prodigious talent in LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers, and even less that on the other side were the San Antonio Spurs in pursuit of – and easily winning – their third championship inside of a decade.

If anything, the Spurs are living proof that it’s not always about the best going up against the best, but more often than not about the easiest way to sell a publication. In fact, their past two championship runs – the 2002-03 and 2006-07 seasons – produced the lowest ratings in NBA Finals history.

In comparison to the 2007 Finals, the only way was up when the Celts and Lakers collided this past June. But its average pull of roughly 14 million televised homes per game saw the NBA post its best ratings since 2004. It also so happened to be the last time the Lakers appeared in the Finals, in another classic matchup against the Detroit Pistons.

The moral of the story in the NBA? To quote fellow longtime New York Knicks fan Jerry Seinfeld, “You don’t root for the player, you root for the uniform.”

All that said, both basketball and baseball, while far removed from its marketing glory days, still post ratings that network executives would kill for after reviewing boxing’s returns.

The same cannot be said of the National Hockey League.

Like the NBA, 2007 wasn’t very kind to hockey, in fact the sport’s very worst if you go by the ratings for the Stanley Cup Finals, in which the Anaheim Ducks defeated the Ottawa Senators in five games.

Including in its series of ratings infamy was its Game 3 posting of just over 1.2 million viewers on NBC, making it the lowest ever prime-time broadcast – not just sports but any telecast – in the network’s history. Of the five games, only one – Game 4 – managed to crack the 2 million mark in the States, though viewership fared considerably better in hockey-friendly Canada.

To put it into proper perspective, the 2.1 million number for Game 4 (also on NBC) meant that fewer stateside homes were interested in watching a championship hockey game on free network television than they were willing to pay $55 for Mayweather Jr – Oscar de la Hoya, the most marketable event of a sport rumored for years to be on its death bed.

Hockey seriously righted its ship in 2008, thanks to the Detroit Red Wings returning to the Finals as they beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, also a ratings-friendly hockey franchise.

The same formula was applied – coverage for what turned out to be a six game series split between NBC and Versus. Only with more marketable teams, record lows were replaced with record highs. Game 2 produced the highest ever rating for an NHL game on Versus, and in fact the network’s second highest ever-rated broadcast of any sport or show. The series-closing Game Six on NBC generated the network’s best hockey rating in the 21st Century, with the series as whole being the most watched since NBC welcomed back the NHL in 2004.

Among the aforementioned sports, their worst ratings had as little to do with poorly executed marketing strategies or any drop off – considerable or otherwise - in top talent as their best ratings could be attributed to reinventing the wheel.

In the case of all, the most watched events in recent years were a direct result of the most historically familiar story lines. For whatever reason, the masses choose to ignore that the same can be said of boxing.

Often repeated are the token cries of, “boxing needs more match ups featuring the best facing the best,” when discussing the waning interest in the sport. This insistence, despite the fact that the top-selling pay-per-view event of each year dating back to 1995 featured at least one of three names – Mike Tyson, Oscar de la Hoya or Felix Trinidad.

On some occasions, most notably Trinidad-de la Hoya in 1999, the ratings (1.4 million PPV buys) matched the talent on display (both considered to be no worse than among the world’s best three fighters by most experts at the time of their fight).

Other times, the ratings were a direct result of the sideshow factor accompanying the event. Tyson’s 90-second demolition of Peter McNeely had less to do with either fighter resembling the best heavyweight in 1995 than it did with the event serving as his first post-prison fight, thus ending a forced three-year stay from the ring.

Very few confused Ricardo Mayorga for one of the world’s best junior middleweights (few publications even had him ranked among their Top 10 for the division) when de la Hoya ended his 20-month hiatus from the sport in May 2006. Nor was de la Hoya regarded as the best in the division, never mind all of boxing, upon scoring a sixth round knockout that evening.

Like Floyd Mayweather last year, Manny Pacquiao carries the torch of boxing’s very best when he squares off against the sport’s biggest draw. But win, lose or draw, nobody can say that Pacquiao is facing the best available opponent this weekend.

He already turned that trick nine months ago, when he barely outlasted Juan Manuel Marquez in one of the year’s best fights in a rematch to one of 2004’s best fights. But far more remembered than the rematch producing a lineal junior lightweight champion was its 400,000 pay-per-view buys, the best ever return for a fight below 147 lb. 

By boxing’s standards, 400,000 buys (which translates to $20 million in revenue, excluding the gate receipts) is a heck of a pull. But far be it for any mainstream sports journalist to even vaguely recall the event, never mind recalling what was at stake or where Pacquiao – or Marquez for that matter – ranked at the time.

Those same writers, editors and broadcasters are now well aware, thanks to the aggressive marketing push that came with the fight. But what should be a testament to all that Pacquiao has achieved in his career – winning lineal world championships in three weight classes (112, 126 and 130 lb) and alphabet titles in two more (122, 135) – has instead become all about de la Hoya’s willingness to always challenge the best.

An event that most boxing writers deem as the sport’s biggest draw picking on a smaller fighter is instead celebrated by the mainstream as the best fighting the best. In the eyes of those who decide to check in with boxing once or twice per year, Oscar de la Hoya is still the only game in town, while their reference to Pacquiao as boxing’s best has less to do with their informed opinion as it does with the verbiage provided in the accompanying press kit.

Nevertheless, this weekend’s fight will go down as the most viewed of 2008, never mind that nothing will change no matter the result.

Win, lose or draw, Pacquiao is still the sport’s best fighter and de la Hoya will remain its biggest draw, with his next pay-per-view event (since we all know this won’t be the last) resulting in the most watched of that year.

Next to nobody beyond the sport’s hardcore will recall the names Juan Manuel Lopez, Victor Ortiz or Daniel Jacobs, all of whom appear on the televised undercard this weekend. Lopez is already rapidly emerging as one of the best junior featherweights in the world, with all three fighters pegged to eventually represent the best of boxing as we know it in the near future.

Regardless of what happens on December 6, the mainstream media will return to business as usual the moment this weekend’s event is no longer rendered a relevant story line. Whatever coverage is provided this Sunday morning, will considerably dwarf that of next and every other Sunday in the foreseeable future. 
 
Therein lies the real problem. No matter the trials and tribulations of America’s “Big Four” (football, baseball, basketball, hockey), the free networks are still willing to invest heavily into each sport. The media will still cover each on a daily basis - even during the off-season, even if all that changes from day to day is the source of a quote regarding the same pending trade, contract negotiation or what have you.

Long gone are the days when boxing enjoys the same luxuries, and not by its own choice. With other sports, one door opens even as another door closes. With boxing, the doors keep closing, with fewer and fewer options to showcase its product, no matter how good that product may be (and damn good at its very best).

Like every other sport, boxing will continue on no matter how many times the Chicken Littles of the world scream “The sky is falling.” Boxing may need to be cleaned up, perhaps even revamped. But it doesn’t need to be saved. 

It just needs to be watched.

Jake Donovan is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.