When Carlos Zarate was voted Fighter of the Year by Ring Magazine in 1977, and later ranked at 21 in that same magazine’s list of the 100 greatest punchers of all time, few, least of all Zarate himself, would have imagined that on January 14, 2026, he would act as the inspiration for a social media post prompting followers to “Name a random boxer." But, alas, sometimes even the greats fall from grace, or are forgotten, or find their work underappreciated by an increasingly dumbed-down audience.
In the case of Zarate, this tragedy befell the Mexican on Wednesday afternoon, when DAZN, one of the few platforms still covering boxing these days, asked their social media followers: “Does it get more random than Carlos Zarate?”
Thankfully, what followed that bizarre question was a brief history lesson, with one commenter quick to jump to Zarate’s defense and explain to DAZN the significance of the 74-year-old’s legendary career. Indignant, yet impressively calm, this commenter proceeded to remind – or inform – DAZN that Zarate once held the WBC bantamweight title from 1976 to 1979 and is regarded as one of the best bantamweights to have ever boxed professionally.
Then you had others, myself included, who were so baffled by the original post that they wondered if this was just a matter of ignorance and that DAZN, bless them, had simply misunderstood the word “random." After all, in the context of Carlos Zarate, what exactly did they think the word meant? Did it mean forgotten/forgettable? Did it mean overlooked or underrated? Did it mean irrelevant?
If you want something random, look no further than the post itself. Now that was random. Nobody had asked for it, nobody had expected it, and nobody really knew how to react to it, either. If, like all social media posts, its primary purpose was to trigger engagement, it failed even on that front, with only 15 replies on Twitter/X and just five retweets. Even if the aim had been to incite anger – “rage bait,” they call it – it flopped on that front, too, with only one commenter pointing out to DAZN that Zarate is considered among the greatest Mexican fighters ever, then telling them: “Please do better. Your social team is literally disrespecting the sport you’re supposed to care about & showing its lack of knowledge.” The rest just shrugged and played along, each of them offering names no more or less random than Carlos Zarate.
Livingstone Bramble. Rocky Marciano. Erik Morales. Jason Litzau. Henry Armstrong. Elvis Ahorgah. Pipino Cuevas. Fidel Smith. Iran Barkley. Francisco Fonseca. Harry Greb. Wilfredo Vazquez. Syed Lawal [they meant Said Lawal].
See how stupid it is? See how nothing about the question or the replies makes any sort of logical sense? If random means just naming things, not only is that something anybody can do, regardless of their interest in or knowledge of boxing, but encouraging it suggests the sport must really be struggling to generate anything of note at the start of 2026. Yes, it may be January, a famously slow and barren month for boxing, but surely those “creatives” behind social media accounts can do better than ask followers to just name whatever boxer comes to mind and call it “content." It’s not big, that approach, and it’s certainly not clever. In fact, to read that DAZN post on Wednesday afternoon, and then see a smattering of people try to engage with it, was not unlike seeing friends or family members post every harebrained opinion/detail of their life on Facebook and force you to have to reassess your view of them in the real world. It was, in other words, Too Much Information. If, in their mind, the greats of the sport are deemed “random” and the current crop are all that matter, it would have been better, both for them and for us, for that belief to be kept private. Some thoughts are better not shared. Some posts function better as drafts. Some questions are better not asked.
As it is, because that question was asked, you now start to question everything. You question not just DAZN’s understanding of the word “random” and their knowledge of Carlos Zarate’s accomplishments, but you also question whether the direction in which this thing is moving – a world of content, banter and hot takes – is capable of doing justice to the boxers, the ones currently active and the ones long retired. You can call it just a bit of fun all you want, yet it is interesting how things often sold to us as fun, or as entertainment, are later found to be to our detriment or otherwise seen as in some way damaging in the long term. Perhaps when we think of fun, in this way at least, we are merely giving ourselves an excuse. An excuse to be lazy. An excuse to avoid learning things. An excuse to be stupid.
In boxing, as in life, it works better of course if you are stupid. You know less, so you care less and worry less. It works better for everyone else, too, if you are stupid. That way you are easily led and fooled; easily both bought and sold to. That way you think boxing means one thing when it actually means – or meant – something else. You hear that Jake Paul is fighting Anthony Joshua, for example, and you don’t so much as question it, for you see nothing wrong with it by the standards of today. All you might offer, in the form of a quote tweet, is this: “LOL. SO RANDOM.” This, you accept, is the new normal. It’s why you find yourself watching Misfits the same way you watch "Love Island" or any other crap reality TV show. You call it a guilty pleasure. Or just a bit of fun. "Harmless" fun. It’s also why you watch boxing, real boxing, find a second home in Riyadh, where big money can be made, and believe only what you see and are told. When someone asks you why Saudi Arabia now runs the sport, you reply only that it is “a bit random, yeah” and shrug your shoulders. You then hear of the banning of journalists from press conferences and fights and say, “Yeah, but at least we’re getting the big fights now.” Besides, why should you care about the access of some random journalist nobody even knows? You offer the same shrug of indifference when the subject of performance-enhancing drugs comes up and when those who have failed a random test are suddenly back in the ring making money. It doesn’t affect you, so you just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and – oh look, DAZN have posted. That’s random. Who’s Carlos Zarate?
