By Terence Dooley
British boxing fans have called long and hard for stacked cards, fifty-fifty fights and future world stars. We got them, but were also handed Sky PPVs, highly-anticipated fights that cannot possibly live up to the hype, long bills and talented prospects beating up guys they are supposed to beat up in a bid to get them rounds.
Many modern fans call the current situation a “Disgrace” (or another hyperbolic world of your choice); the older, dejected and sceptical amongst us call it “Boxing” (or “that perennial arse ache”, as it is called down my way). As Tony Soprano said: “Every day is a gift, but does it have to be a pair of socks?” Well, to sock someone is to punch them, and the sport of boxing is more often than not a blow to the guts rather than a kiss under the mistletoe.
Saturday night saw Frank Warren serve up the kind of card that fans have called long and hard for. Fights that, on paper, were close to fifty-fifty affairs, (but let’s not forget that fights are made on papers, fought on canvas and the percentages can get lost in translation), a stacked bill and a big show—which always necessitates a big venue that’s free on your given weekend.
The promoter was lauded during the weeks leading up to the show; by Sunday morning the talk was about the venue, the typical problems you get at big fights, the running order and subsequent over-running of the event.
The running order could have been handled better, but, on the other hand, London’s Mitchell Smith sold a decent number of tickets so had to be accommodated before the main events. The problem with Mitchell’s fight with Zoltan Kovacs (W 10) was the early hand injury suffered by Smith and the fact that he may not be quite the “next Ricky Hatton” that his trainer Jason Rowland hopes he will be. His anodyne tussle with Kovacs killed the atmosphere somewhat and pushed the timings way into the night.
Another problem was the bout between Frankie Gavin and Bradley Skeete, which was always likely to be the type of technical, distance affair that very few fans bought a ticket for. This one had 12-rounds written all over it, but had to be shoehorned in and, going in, was absorbed into the bill’s “stacked” status. Predictably, it went the distance and contributed to the show over-running by over 90-minutes.
Throw out these two bouts and you have a leaner bill, you also miss out a ticket seller and one of the fights that people talked about prior to the show itself. It’s a lose-lose situation, one that’s exacerbated by the fact that British transport grinds to a halt after 12:30am, which is the reason I’ve never put myself at the mercy of trains, buses or trams when it comes to attending a boxing show. Still, a lesson for the future is that the PA system should be used to keep fans abreast of the local train times so that they can decide whether to stick or twist.
As is the norm these days, Twitter went into meltdown the next day. Some things can be written off immediately if you have attended a live show: outside toilets or limited toilet access is common and fights in the crowd are a regular occurrence.
Indeed, the promoter is normally in charge of putting a security crew in place to manage the ring walks and some of the ringside area, whereas the venue and police are usually in charge of the stands, so fights in the stands cannot be pinned on the promotional outfit.
As a venue, the Excel is a whole new ball game. It is not a purpose built events centre, more of an exhibition space in which arenas have to be built inside and everything else drafted in. Some of the criticisms that arose are a simple case of ignorance of the venue's limitations and/or needing something, anything with which to beat the show with.
Again, there are lessons to learned, chief amongst them not to attend a show at the ExCel, which is a diabolically bad venue for professional boxing—although it did host the boxing at London 2012 so has big-occasion pedigree.
Warren has stated that his next big show will take place at Wembley, the Copper Box or the O2, this will take care of a few criticisms, but people will probably make idiots of themselves due to excessive drinking—promoters can’t be held responsible for society’s issues.
A lot of the problems that arise at British boxing shows stem from one thing: the fact that English males are, in the main, horrible examples of humanity when gathered together in groups and drinking beer. People who use their local football clubs as an excuse to get into fights, slide quickly and easily into mob mentality, and cannot be trusted to self-regulate.
You could have one police officer for every man in the building and they’d still find a way to get into trouble—if you want to avoid seeing fighting outside of the ropes at shows then watch them on TV. Bear in mind that our Scottish and Irish neighbours have adopted a vow of good group behaviour as one of their sole means of defeating their old foe. They know our nature and what to expect from the English when they arrive somewhere mob handed.
If you want to completely control the crowds you would have to get rid of the, but we cannot do that as we need ticket sales. The average casual punter will buy tickets to attend an event not to marvel at the skills on display but to say: “I was there. I was too drunk to recall it, but I was there.” Like it or not, boxing needs those ticket sales.
Speaking of tickets, images of what appeared to be duplicates popped up on Twitter. BoxingScene understands, and Warren has also stated, that this is a ticketing, rather than promotional, issue and will be addressed by Eventim. One aspect of the Twitter ticket furore that can be discussed here is the claim that a video blogger was not accredited to the press row.
In reality and as I understand and have seen it, video bloggers are given a seat in the press overspill section, as they do not need to watch the fights, and given access to the fighters—in some cases better access that the printed press.
The press pit is the preserve of the print press, the scribes who need to watch the fights. Let’s face it, the majority of video bloggers don’t know what they are looking at anyway so the overspill is a perfectly acceptable place for them to do their work, especially as they have cameras in tow—broadcast rights and contracts have to be safeguarded.
Overall, the show itself could have been trimmed, but it needed to sell too, and the main events were going to go on later than usual regardless due to U.S. TV involvement. The fact that most of the fights went the distance is down to sod’s law—some were destined to, others could have ended earlier on a different night but didn’t. That’s boxing for you.
Reacting to the comments about the show, Warren confirmed to BoxingScene that Eventim are looking into the duplicate ticket issue and has assured fans that future main events will be on no later than 11pm (with a 30-minute 'discretionary' period for incidentals).
One disappointing criticism of the show was the grumbles about the main events not being as exciting as many had expected them to be. The revelation that fifty-fifty fights are often cagey affairs came as a surprise to some.
This isn’t a new thing. Let’s go back to 1999, the year when some huge fights (Evander Holyfield-Lennox Lewis and Oscar De La Hoya-Felix Trinindad the notable examples) failed to fire, only for the November rematch between Holyfield and Lewis to “save” the year. Despite not being quite as good as people had hoped the first one to be, the return’s saving grace was that it wasn’t quite as bad.
It might be a Youtube thing. We’ve got loads of Great Fights playlists, maybe it’s time for a Fights That We Thought Would Be Great But Were Pretty Poor list—purely to temper that expectations of the digital generation. Boxing doesn’t always deliver, when it does, as it did in the second half of Saunders-Eubank, it makes you jump up and down while shouting at the TV and reminds you why you follow the sport, but not every big fight catches fire—that’s something to bear in mind for the future.
Overall, Warren promised a big bill topped by big, domestic fights and he delivered it, despite widespread scepticism over whether Saunders and Eubank would materialise, so we can take the positives from it and move on to the next one, pencilled in for February, with the perennial optimism of the hard-core boxing fan.
Moving on from the ExCel, and back in a time seven days, you had the Matchroom show at Liverpool’s Echo Arena. I wrote about the PPV aspect of it before the show, so won’t say much about that. A lot of the post-fight criticism was born out of the fact that fans paid for a big bill that featured a lot of run outs for Eddie Hearns’s prospects and was topped by the rematch between Tony Bellew and Nathan Cleverly—another domestic grudge match that failed to catch fire until late on. Had Bellew-Cleverly delivered throughout the show would have received less vilification. It didn’t and the promoter and fighters were criticised—again, that’s boxing for you.
Interestingly, the Echo show was on course to be a success before the first bell rang. It did healthy PPV buys and is part of the movement towards a certain kind of PPV—a domestic fifty-fifty, ideally two, Eddie, with a slew of name fighters or prospects supporting the main event(s).
This type of show was ushered in by fan demand and the success of Carl Froch versus George Groves, you can’t complain about getting bitten if you allowed the vampire to cross the threshold. To sweeten the blow to our dough, Sky should throw in a U.K.-U.S. crossover night as well, there’s always something magical, if gruelling about those night.
Similarly, Warren’s big shows will follow Saturday’s format and a lot will ride on the fights catching fire. Some will, some won’t, but you might get the odd bill where they all do, and that’s when you sit back, put your feet and say: “I f*cking love this sport.” And that’s the best that any boxing fan can hope for.
Either way, we have had two big arena shows in quick succession and both of them were sold out affairs. That’s good going for a sport that is often said to be “Dead” or “Dying”. Roll on 2015.
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