By Kieran Mulvaney
It is just a two-or-three minute walk to my local bar. (Walking back, due to the extra distance covered on account of the less-than-straight line I follow, takes maybe a minute longer). The bar is owned by and named after Joe Theismann, the quarterback who led the Washington Redskins to victory in SuperBowl XVII. Theismann’s career, of course, ended two years later, in the second quarter of a Monday Night Football game, when New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor hit him with a tackle that shattered his tibia and fibula. It is a measure of the man’s humor that his bar’s signature homebrew is called Broken Leg Amber.
I digress.
The reason I bring this up is because Theismann’s is, as you would expect, a sports bar. Three big plasma screens line the wall above the bar itself, and several other plasmas hang from the ceilings throughout the seating area. The only time any of the screens don’t show ESPN is when they show ESPN2. Or Fox Sports. Or a regional baseball or college game. Pretty much the only conversation at the bar is about sports.
When I go to Theismann’s, I don’t have to ask for a drink, and the bartenders don’t have to ask what I want. I take a seat, and I get my usual—which, for those who might be tempted to buy me a round or two is a beer and a shot of Jameson’s.
I digress again.
The point is: This is a sports bar, where people talk only sports. It is a sports bar where people know me, and know I am a boxing writer. And yet, when I returned from Floyd Mayweather’s stoppage win over Ricky Hatton the other week, this is the conversation I had:
Mark (the bartender): Hi Kieran, how’s it going?
Kieran: Good, just got back from Vegas.
Mark: Yeah? Boxing?
Kieran: Yup.
Mark: Who was fighting?
Kieran: Floyd Mayweather.
Mark: Oh yeah? Who was he fighting this time?
From this statistically significant sample of one, we can deduce the following:
1) Mention Floyd Mayweather’s name in a sports bar, and people will know who you are talking about. I suspect this would not have been the case this time last year.
2) For all the talk of boxing being on its way back, those same people were not necessarily aware of the second biggest fight of the year.
I exaggerate for effect, of course. My statistical sample is, in fact, greater than one. I also discussed the issue with my 78-year-old father, who blamed foreigners and trade unions and then had a nap.
Seriously, I do actually have a point here, which is this: Boxing fans have been pretty excited about 2007, and with good reason. We had a lot of big fights, a lot of entertaining fights, and a couple of fights that broke through into the mainstream. There was even one fight which generated the kind of buzz in the United States that hasn’t been experienced since Mike Tyson was rampaging through the heavyweight division.
But the sport is a long way from being “back,” and extraordinarily far away if by “back” we mean at the level of popularity it enjoyed in the 1940s or even the 1980s. It remains far off the radar screen of even sports fans. That said, it is far from dead, if indeed it ever was close to being so. It is alive and kicking, and if those involved in making the fights—broadcasters, promoters, and the fighters themselves—learn the lessons of 2007 and keep putting them into practice, there is no reason why boxing shouldn’t continue to go from strength to strength.
In fact, the Mayweather-Hatton bout not only showed that the whole “boxing is dead” malarkey is an insular, US-centric notion, it also pointed to the way forward even as it suggested the likely limits of its future growth in the United States.
Twenty-five thousand or so Brits crossed an ocean and most of a continent to cheer on Hatton, whether they had tickets or not. A few weeks earlier, 50,000 people turned out to watch Joe Calzaghe beat Mikkel Kessler. That’s more than watched Mayweather’s last three bouts combined, and, unlike at Mayweather’s bouts, they all actually came to cheer for the main event star, not against him. And in the Philippines, Manny Pacquiao doesn’t just stop traffic, he stops crime. Literally: Crime actually plummets in Manila when he fights—even when he fights in Las Vegas.
That isn’t likely to happen with an American fighter unless he’s a wrecking-ball, Tysonesque heavyweight. We just don’t have the same nationalistic fervor for our athletes that other countries do. Hey, we’re the US of freakin’ A, dammit: our guys are supposed to beat other countries’ guys at everything. And if they don’t: well, then screw them. We have plenty of actual winners to support.
But, combined with a little historical perspective, it does provide a clue to the way forward. When boxing was its absolute peak in this country, there was, whether we like to admit it now six or seven decades later, a strong ethnic and racial tinge to it. Irish fighters fought Italian fighters who fought Jewish fighters, and so forth. That kind of matchmaking would make us uncomfortable now, and rightly so, but sports bring out the tribalism in all of us, and boxing is no exception. We don’t have to pander to the race card, but there is no better way to build up initial interest in and support for fighters than garnering a local and regional following.
“I know one thing,” legendary trainer Angelo Dundee said to me the other day. “I know all we need is local kids. I’m involved with a local kid called Jimmy Lange. He fights out of Fairfax, Virginia. Every time he fights, he draws 5,000 people. So there you go. That’s the key. More local kids.”
Yes, that’s right. That Jimmy Lange. Featured on the original season of “The Contender” for all of, oh, five minutes. And he draws 5,000 fans to each and every one of his fights.
Few promoters are more aware of this aspect of the game than Bob Arum. That’s why he targets cards specifically toward Hispanic audiences. That’s why he has Miguel Cotto fight in New York every year on the eve of Puerto Rican Day. That’s why he wants Kelly Pavlik to make his first defense of the middleweight title in Cleveland.
Build them up locally. Appeal to a targeted fan base. And then, when they become known nationally, keep them fighting locally whenever possible. Don’t start staging every one of their fights in Las Vegas.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Sin City as much as anyone, and I look forward to every fight week at the MGM Grand or Mandalay Bay. But a lot of fights end up there that don’t belong there, and would be better off being staged closer to one or both main eventers’ home turfs or fan bases. But, too often, promoters have become lazy and have taken advantage of the site fees on offer from the big casinos, without bothering to actually promote the fight, to go out there and work hard to get people into the seats. Because they don’t have to: they have the site fees, they have the TV money, and as far as they’re concerned, their job is done. And in terms of recouping their investment, it is. But it doesn’t do much for getting people invested in the sport. That’s why the greatest fight I ever saw and probably ever will see, Diego Corrales versus Jose Luis Castillo, played out in front of fewer than 5,000 fans in a 12,000 seat arena.
The really big events still belong in Las Vegas. There is nowhere else quite like it. But there’s another problem. If you put fights in Vegas without making the effort to encourage real boxing fans to come along, the arena tends to be empty and devoid of atmosphere until shortly before the main event. Partly as a result, and partly to save money, promoters have too often recently stacked those undercards with garbage fights, choosing to spread the entertaining bouts among as many cards as possible.
But if there is one thing that at least a couple of promoters have learned from the challenge posed this year by the UFC, it is that a large part of the reason for that organization’s success has been that each of its cards is stacked from top to bottom, every fight a meaningful one; as a result, the arenas are almost always two-thirds full or more from the first bell.
There are certain factors that will likely always limit the extent of boxing’s rebirth, not the least of them the greater opportunities now available to pursue easier, more lucrative athletic pursuits than existed in Rocky Marciano’s day. As Bert Sugar is fond of musing, in his mind the best heavyweights in America today are Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher.
But the key to renewed and continued success is simple enough. It isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t particularly original. Just three simple steps: 1) Build up fighters locally; 2) Make the best possible fights; and 3) Put on entertaining cards from top to bottom.
As long as boxing keeps following those rules, it’ll be just fine. The sport has already attracted more mainstream attention this year than for some time; if it keeps going the way it did in 2007, then maybe Mark the bartender and the other denizens of Theismann’s will wind up watching every card. And if they don’t: no matter. At least of those of us who do follow boxing will be treated to the fights we want to see.
That might not be the 1940s, or even the 1980s, but it would be pretty damn good.