October is apparently the new August.

We’ve come to expect the boxing schedule to be slow in that last full month of summer, before things pick up with Mexican Independence Day weekend. There have been some August exceptions – most notably in 2017, when Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor staged the second richest pay-per-view event of all-time – but traditionally, big-time boxing takes the month off.

Until this year. October 2025 has been a pacifist’s dream.

There have hardly been any fights. The few fights we’ve had haven’t been especially compelling. And when there’s finally a halfway meaningful fight on the schedule – Joseph Parker vs. Fabio Wardley this Saturday, which qualifies as halfway meaningful, but that’s as far as I’ll go – they ask us to pay an extra $60 for it.

Which means most fans have zero halfway meaningful fights this month they’ll actually watch.

It's been a depressing month to be a boxing fan, frankly. So let’s lean into the depression. Let’s lean into the frustration. Let’s lean into how “worse than any August that I can remember” this October is.

Here, in no particular order, are the eight most depressing boxing stories of October 2025. And you’ll notice that, tellingly, very few of them have to do with actual fights that happened or are happening this month.

Sebastian Fundora’s injury

There was one good card on tap for this month: the October 25 PBC pay-per-view headlined by Sebastian Fundora vs. Keith Thurman, with a tremendous co-feature pitting O’Shaquie Foster against Stephen Fulton.

But 15 days before fight night, Fundora postponed his bout due to a hand injury sustained in training, and the whole card was scrapped. In another time — say, two years ago, when PBC was in business with Showtime — the move might have been to keep the Foster-Fulton fight on the schedule and move it from PPV to Showtime Championship Boxing, giving boxing fans something look forward to this Saturday night.

But the PBC-on-Prime era is, unfortunately, mostly just the PBC-on-Prime-PPV era, and so the various fights on this card are landing on other upcoming pay-per-view events. There will be some delayed gratification. But gratification of the instant variety is not available in October 2025.

Paulie Malignaggi’s face

To be clear, I have no issue with Paulie’s face under normal circumstances. I’m specifically referring to the way it looked after his Bare Knuckle Boxing match against Tyler Goodjohn last weekend.

Malignaggi had two grotesque vertical gashes on his forehead, not to mention broken ribs and damaged hands. Fighters always take physical risks. They’re always making some sort of trade-off when they step into the ring. But this was different. This caused a visceral reaction. This time, one look at Paulie made you say, “Nope, not worth it.”

It’s not exactly surprising to learn this, but a bare knuckle leaves a different physical impression than a gloved fist. Not that we want Malignaggi continuing to take punches in traditional boxing matches either as he closes in on his 45th birthday, but BKB takes it to a whole different level in terms of the aesthetic damage.

Paulie, if you want to dress up as Omar from The Wire for Halloween, there are much easier ways to achieve the effect.

A new pricing tier for DAZN

We don’t know all the details yet, but last week, DAZN, the streamer that had initially sold itself as the white knight of wallets that would rid the world of pay-per-view, made an announcement fully admitting defeat in that mission.

You know that $225 (plus tax) that you’re paying for your annual DAZN subscription? Well, that won’t get you very far. Now you need to bump up to the “premium subscription offering” to get all the PPVs. And there will be a whole lot of PPVs.

They haven’t announced the cost yet, all we have is some PR quotes about this being a cost-saver if you were going to order all the PPVs anyway, but, I’ll believe it when I see it. We live in a “pay more, get less” world, and shrinkflation is hitting boxing fans hard.

I thought this tweet from a British fight fan who goes by “Lucy Mac” summed up the situation well: “Cancelled DAZN. Biggest waste of £15 a month ever. Every show worth watching is PPV anyway, and even half the shows not worth watching are PPV. Sport is essentially inaccessible for the working class person unless you’ve managed to find boozer showing what you want to watch.”

If you’re looking for me on a DAZN pay-per-view night anytime in 2026, call around to the local boozers in the Philadelphia suburbs and I’m sure to turn up.

The Arturo Gatti Jnr tragedy

There were other deaths in boxing this month – Alex Wallau and Eddie Gregg, most notably – but those fell within the bounds of standard human sadness, as Wallau was 80 and Greg was 75.

Arturo Gatti Jnr died a couple of weeks ago at age 17.

This is without a doubt the worst, most depressing boxing story of this month.

As was the case with his father 16 years ago in Brazil, Arturo Jnr.’s death in Mexico was reported to be a suicide by hanging, and as with his Hall of Fame father’s death, “Thunder’s” manager Pat Lynch is unconvinced, saying on his podcast this week that he suspects possible foul play and would like there to be a proper investigation.

Whatever the truth, an aspiring boxer died at just 17 — either because he was violently murdered or because he wanted out of his life. Both scenarios are heartbreaking.

California Commission sides with promoters

In September, the California State Athletic Commission held a public hearing to discuss the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act being pushed by Dana White and Zuffa Boxing, and the backlash was impassioned and more or less unanimous. The people had spoken. This legislation to undo the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act and potentially open the door to a UFC-like monopoly that could significantly hinder boxers financially would be scrutinized, studied, examined — not just rubber-stamped.

Last Wednesday, Executive Director Andy Foster and the rest of the commission  in Cali plugged their ears to the negative feedback and busted out their rubber stamps.

California’s endorsement doesn’t necessarily mean the new Ali Act will be the law of the land … but politicians do have a tendency to let the rich and powerful get their way.

Whatever the pros and cons of the new legislation, the ineffectiveness of the old legislation and the reasonable cases to be made for some sort of reform, it’s frustrating to see a major commission roll over like this.

I’ve been waiting my whole 28-year boxing writing career for someone to try to run the alphabet groups out of the sport. And now it’s finally happening … in a way that makes me wonder who the bad guys are.

A waste of Boots’ time

Not that Uisma Lima wasted much of Jaron “Boots” Ennis time on October 11 in Philly. The fight itself only lasted 118 seconds.

But Ennis ain’t getting any younger, he only fights twice a year, and a mismatch like this is wholly pointless.

Ennis making quick work of an overmatched opponent is better than Ennis not fighting at all — but not by much.

In a month loaded with quality fights and quality cards, one showcase fight for a young uber-talent would be easy enough to shrug off. But this was probably the second-highest-profile fight of the entire month of October, slightly behind Parker-Wardley. It stunk, and there was nothing else cooking to cover up the smell.

Dave Allen, underwear model

If I want to see a sweaty guy with a dad-bod in his underwear, well … all I need is a few minutes to work up a sweat.

I appreciate that “The White Rhino” has a sense of humor about himself. But there’s a time and a place.

Please click this link, so I’m not alone in my suffering.

Ryan Garcia, boxing historian

There are a great many topics about which Ryan Garcia probably should keep his thoughts to himself. And to that list, we can now add assessing the careers of fighters who came before him.

Garcia sparked “debate” (if near-unanimous mockery pitted against a handful of hot-takey basement dwellers with internet connections counts as “debate”) by opining early in the month that Gennadiy Golovkin, a newcomer this year to the International Boxing Hall of Fame ballot, doesn’t deserve induction.

It is fair to poke holes in Golovkin’s resume, but it is also deeply wrong to hold those holes against him when the stars of the middleweight division and its lineal champions wanted nothing to do with “GGG” when he was in his prime.

I’d go deeper into the specifics of the argument, but that would only serve to dignify Garcia’s statement.

Fortunately, this miserable October will be over soon. And we’ll hope for a better, busier November schedule in boxing. And a quieter November for Ryan Garcia.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.