In the past few weeks Boxing fans have been treated too some really good high profile matches. KT quick ko of Sharmba Mitchel and obviously Erik Morales v. MAB were both awesome! Yet this week for a few days what did ESPN do? The bottom line that reports scores and maybe once every other month has a boxing tid bit in it ( the tid bits usually are of Mike Tyson). Well they kept running over and over...How the Riddick Bowe v. Ricky Craven fight was off because of injury. What the fuck! Who cares! There was never mwention of KT, there was no bottom line about the super trilogy that was about too take place...again what the fuck! Instead they post shit about Riddick Bowe. If ESPN and others is not going to cover the best of the best then they should cover nothing at all, period! Now novice boxing fans that see that are going to come up to us cult members and talk about how bad boxing is because Riddick Bowe is still a contender.
I live in Seattle and we have a sports station that is really good, however none of the hosts cover boxing at all, they are afraid of it because there knowledge is so weak. Bert Sugar comes on every Thursday and he does nothing to promote the sport that he so call loves so much. When he is interviewed he is always at some fight venue...yet nothing on the fight that he is there to cover, Dave Mahler who is the host just asks him about old times when he was a kid watching Joe Dimaggio or some shit like that, never boxing. I shouldn't say never...at the end of every half hour segment with Sugar Mahler always say "so whats going on in Boxing... whats Mike Tyson up too?" Burt berates Tyson and says all sorts of bad stuff about him....then Mahler says "whats up with Delahoya?" Sugar syas something like he needs to stick to singing songs with his wife and stay out of the ring." Overall point is many are failing to truly shed the proper light on this great sport, imagine if ESPN had a preview show for all of the big fights, what if Burt Sugar could be a real ambassordor to the sport and instead of letting some uneducated sports jock steer him into 1940's baseball talk...Sugar say"No" were talking big time boxing. People are sheep and they love to follow, the problems is that even the people that are so called into boxing (ESPN, SUgar)are doing the sport a huge diservice everyone time they post Bowe v Craven etc.
I'd bee curious to hear what you all think about this and if there is more examples of the Burt Sugar/sport jock thing in your neck of the woods...this sport is every bit as great as all the others...we just don't have the poeple to artculate it(thats why I like MAx) and when those people are in a position to do something...they don't do shit!
they show pool more on espn than boxing even table tennis spelling b contests and even juggling tournaments... it suks how boxing is a cult sport now... we really do need a boxing 247 channel... or a daily report on boxing like nfl live or nba fastbreak...
:boxing: ESPN is much better now that Max has left...his know it all attitude was grating ,now that his I Max show has been cancelled it's good riddance...watch for ESPNs first PPV show on April 23..its a sizzler and will make the HBO and Showtime boys to take notice..not serve us crap like Barrera vs Fana and put this garbage on PPV...is it just me or is HBO taking their fans for granted and serving us slop lately
Yeah I wish that there was some boxing shows or a regular schedule of fights on a certain channel, just like regular shows. I liked watching tuesday night fights and friday night fights, but havent seen any on for awhile. I just wish people would start to give boxing some of the sports spot light for once instead of seening the same old stuff and every sports channel.
i like fnf, while they may not have high profile fights atleast they are televising boxing regularly.i also like the guests they have now that max is gone.seeing interviews of some of the best boxers on the planet is awsome and espn provides that with thier guests.
I am with you 100% here I love the fact that boxing is on regularly as you do but remember we are cult fans of this sport. We need to attract regualr sports fans to the sweet science, they will not get pumped up watching Billy Irwin or Chucky T, it just won't happen. I also love the guest that they have on since Max left it is great too listen to those guys but boxing is big for the couple hours a week it i on and then forgotten about entirely on regular espn...they never even speak of the sport? I will watch fights all day long but regular sports fans won't, they will however watch Koyta tszyu, they would watch Barerra or Morales if they had some real build up...instead Espn chose to talk about BOwe v. Craven,....they even dedicated an hour on outside the lines to Bowe...this has to change if the sport is going to get better.
My local sports station is actullay pretty good about boxing. The guys who are during the day in the middle of the week actually go to Mandalay Bay for every big fight. They were just there a couple weeks ago and they had both Shane and Winky on. They also have Rich Morotta, who as you may know does boxing for Fox Sports, who does a boxing show every Saturday morning. He has all kinds of guests on. I listened on morning and he had Diego Corrales as a guest host. The station I am talking about is based in L.A, where boxing may be more of a priority than other cities.
As for ESPN, I think they could do a better job too.
i like fnf, while they may not have high profile fights atleast they are televising boxing regularly.i also like the guests they have now that max is gone.seeing interviews of some of the best boxers on the planet is awsome and espn provides that with thier guests.
FNF is great but mainstream espn does not cover boxing. it is a dying sport because no one promotes it...I have tons of friends who have become huge fight fans in recent years who had no clue about all of the great fighters in the sport. Again people are like sheep, if ESPN and others report it and make it important then they will follow, if they report shit like Riddick bowe then they will be forced to make up their mind about the sport based off of that.
FNF's are great but lets face it, that for the most part is b and c level fighters, very rarely do you see an A guy on and if he is an A guy chances are he is young and is not clearly legit yet. My point here is that try to get a regular fan into football by having him watch the CFL or the world league. Try to get a guy to watch baseball by showing him AA or AAA ball....it won't happen-casual fans are not going to get passionate about the sport watching b and c level guys they have to be exposed to the best!
ESPN was really good in having Friday Night Fights. FNF was a great asset to boxing as it was regularly scheduled boxing cards and had expert commentators and weekly guests. It discussed the boxing world and made the boxing community more of a frequent thing than a once a month thing. But ESPN never really payed much attention to the sport as it has in recent years become a cult sport that focused on the hispanic market. Everyone wants to be like Mike, just not Tyson. We are dealing with a big issue in why boxing doesn't get the attention I feel it deserves: The superstars of boxing are household names, just not in your house. I believe that in 2002, boxing was behind Track and Field as far as endorsement profits. Its a dying sport in the mainstream world.