With social media ablaze following the shows in Times Square, Saudi Arabia and then Las Vegas, what were the biggest takeaways from the three nights of boxing?

Tris Dixon: Where do you start? Two big names don’t make a good fight… Don’t make fights ahead of other fights, get straight to it… Too many mandatories are filler opponents and not the right fight, or deserving of the right fights… Matchmaking isn’t as easy as it’s sometimes made to look… Hopefully a lot of lessons have been learned.

Lucas Ketelle: Two takeaways. The passion seemed void as the motivation for many fighters didn't appear to be legacy, but the check associated with the fights. Also, matchmaking matters. Matchmakers like Bruce Trampler, Brad Goodman, Robert Diaz, or Charles Bosecker build cards that find interesting styles and carry undercards or even the main cards. What I saw was how vital matchmakers are to the sport and the craft it takes to make an enjoyable card. Big names alone can't replace a seasoned matchmaker making a good night of fights. 

Ryan Songalia: First, we learned that the fans make boxing. The crowd was absolutely dead for the Times Square fights because, in all of the elitist fervor, the organizers forgot to allow the real fans of the sport to watch the fights. How much more exciting would it have been if there were cheers when Ryan Garcia got dropped in round two? It felt like the COVID era boxing shows when some fights just never got started because the environment felt more like a sparring session.

Another thing I learned is, it’s a lot cheaper to watch a fight by paying for it on your phone than spending $200 at a Times Square bar because they won’t let you sit and watch the fights unless you keep buying drinks and wings. Never heard of gratuity on a table of four before…

Matt Christie: Regarding Times Square, there’s obviously a reason why sporting events do not take place in the middle of it. It’s unworkable and there’s not enough money in the world that could change that. As for the New York fights, well, one might say that was just plain unlucky. It happens. But Canelo versus Scull in Saudi Arabia was a bad idea from the start – as Canelo himself realized last year when he relinquished the IBF title rather than do battle with a slippery and elusive unknown who’d done nothing to merit his place in the IBF rankings.

Kieran Mulvaney: Guess what? There's more to being a successful boxing promoter than having unlimited funds. Virtually everyone in the sport knew Canelo-Scull was a bad matchup (including Canelo and Scull) and so it proved. And when it became clear exactly how things were going to be set up, virtually everyone said the Times Square experiment was a bad idea, too, and so it was. 

It's hard not to suspect that the flat performances on display on Friday night were at least partly related to the lack of atmosphere. When you're the kind of person who can snap their fingers to make critics go away, you're unlikely to be interested in the needs and wants of the little people, but boxing, like all sports, needs fans. They are its bread and butter, and this weekend they were rinsed even more comprehensively than usual. Those involved ignore the lessons at their peril.

Eric Raskin: There are countless lessons to choose from, but I’ll narrow my list to two.

First, performance-enhancing drugs enhance performances.

And second, ambition and creativity are valuable qualities in boxing promotions, but they must be accompanied by practicality and planning. You can’t just say, “Let’s put on a fight card in Times Square.” You start with that idea, and then you ask “How will we do it?” and you talk to the various authorities and you plan it out and you get the necessary permits and so forth and so on … and then you announce it publicly. This whole “move fast and break things” approach to life is a euphemism for “do a shoddy job, hope to get lucky,” and Friday’s event was a perfect example of what happens when blind luck doesn’t bail you out.

Elliot Worsell: They don’t care. They don’t care how it looks, how it is received, who wins what, who fails what, or what anybody says. In fact, putting on crap fights inside a walled-off area while real life goes on all around them was kind of the perfect metaphor for what has been going on the last couple of years. In that prison, where enemies and sycophants hold hands, it may all look fine and dandy, but nothing about it is real or remotely compelling. To everybody else, those on the outside, there is now less of an interest in entering that bubble and it won’t be long before they don’t even want to watch what’s going on inside it.

Owen Lewis: One main takeaway for me: it’s time to stop marketing fights on individuals and start marketing them on matchups. Blinded by the collective fame on display Friday and Saturday, few stopped to note how mismatched the fights themselves were. I’m constantly irritated by boxing’s fetish for star power. It’s the reason Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s shoddy matchmaking since he lost to Dmitry Bivol at the ripe old age of 32 gets excused – as if Oleksandr Usyk and Terence Crawford aren’t taking and winning legacy fights despite being years older than him. It’s the reason Ryan Garcia gets a pass for his positive drug tests last year, as well as his frankly inexcusable bigotry. It’s the reason more people don’t call out Teofimo Lopez as a racist. 

I’d urge boxing media to retire the phrase “face of boxing” for a while, or at least reconsider which fighter deserves to wear it. We all know that it takes two for a great fight. I don’t expect boxing to learn its lesson, but if we’re as interested in great fights as we claim we are, going forward we should be a little more muted about stars fighting giant underdogs and a lot more effusive about well-matched fights.

Tom Ivers: I think fight nights with next to no crowd, like the one we saw in Times Square, need to be scrapped. I’m unsure why the event went ahead in the way it did. During the COVID-19 pandemic we learnt that fighters, especially those who are aggressive and press the action, just cannot perform to the same level with no atmosphere.

For those who box on the back foot, a lack of a crowd suits their style. They’re not under the same pressure from jeers and cheers to make the fight more entertaining, and the crowd noise has less effect on the judges scoring aggression. Fighters can treat the contest as a spar. It’s not good for boxing.

Ryan Garcia made the comments that he just could not get going in there, and even with a small crowd in attendance for Canelo Alvarez in Saudi Arabia it was a dull affair. People often forget that most fighters don’t just fight for money, they once did it for the thrill in the amateurs, and the crowd plays a massive part in that.

Jason Langendorf: Spend wisely. Support the fighters who consistently deliver. Put your money where commensurate entertainment value is returned to you. I’ve already seen a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking that defends the weekend’s cards, matchups and results – which hits a little too close to home in our current environment of folks voting against their own best interests.

The deepest cards and best fights won’t happen consistently until the market forces the hand of those at the levers of power. Me? I’d much rather spend $50 on a local club show than twice that on Friday’s weak excuse for a pay-per-view. Fight organizers need a reason to do better. Time to give it to them.

David Greisman: Devin Haney was overly cautious while barely engaging en route to a victory. William Scull was overly cautious while barely engaging en route to defeat. Yes, boxing can be like American football – where it’s better to win ugly and look better next time. But as boxing is also a business, we need more promoters and networks to not reward boring performances. We’ll see what fights Haney and Scull are able to land next. There are probably fewer people who want to see Haney now than after his overturned loss to Ryan Garcia. And who would ever want to step in with Scull again? Win or lose, it’ll be ugly.

Declan Warrington: If it shouldn’t count as a lesson, it was certainly a reminder that matchmaking and effective promotion go hand in hand, and that matching fighters isn’t nearly as easy as many would like to tell themselves. Of the two Ring Magazine promotions, only Rolando “Rolly” Romero emerged with his reputation significantly enhanced. By comparison, at the conclusion of the Top Rank promotion, all four fighters involved in the two fights at the top of the bill were even more respected than they already were. 

A further reminder was provided of how self-defeating it can be to overpay fighters. What incentive did Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and William Scull have to produce more than the minimum they actually did?