I'm SICK AND TIRED of people calling BOXING a DEAD SPORT!!!!

Kball, You make some good points but I think in some very real way boxing is, in fact, a dead sport in this country (talkin usa here). It is true that more networks show fights now than ever before. It is true that more fights are broadcast now than ever before. It is true that more money is generated now than ever before. Unfortunately it is also true that if you go into Brooklyn, NY, and ask someone who Collazo or Judah is, you'll get a blank stare. One could easily argue that the increased exposure and extra revenue of boxing is attributed simply to the fact that we have data flying all of the place nowadays (internet, hand held devices, satellite, cable, etc...). This means for fans of boxing, you will see more fights (great), but what is being done to get more/new fans? The fact is, there are more fights being shown now and there is more money being generated. So, how is it possible that the sport generates more money now than in any other point in its history yet can be a "dead sport"? Two ways: 1 - American Culture 2 - Lack of structure within boxing Allow me to elaborate on those points... #1 American Culture: The big three here are football, baseball, and basketball. You can buy things like trading cards, sneakers, and jerseys. Anything like that exist for boxing? no. How about publications? Sports illustrated is out every week covering these sports. When any boxing mag comes out it's literally months out of date. These other sports are in people's faces 24x7 (think about how huge fantasy sports are as well). More importantly though, is the built-in audience these other sports have that boxing doesnt have. People grow up playing these other sports. People grow up playing little league baseball and pop warner football; how many people grow up boxing? Very few. This is important because people contine to play in high school and in college. Even if they never turn pro, the love of the game (from playing all those years) is there. Boxing has no such audience. This is why mma has the potential to be much larger than boxing; wrestling is a fairly popular sport in the US at the high school and college level. Now these kids have a pro sport to be interested in when their hs/college careers are over - again, a built-in audience that boxing simply does not have. It's an uphill battle. #2 Lack of structure within boxing: I love the fact that despite my busy work schedule I can go online, check out the mets schedule and make plans to see a game months ahead of time. You can't do this in boxing. Let's say you're a diehard winky wright fan and you wanna plan your schedule to see him fight. ok, when is he fighting next? who is he fighting? where is he fighting? See, it's bullshit, you can't do that. Boxing needs scheduling structure. How is this possible? Take boxing's biggest weakness and turn it into a strength. I am talking about the different sanctioning bodies (ibf,wbc, etc...). Consider this, in football (american) you have two conferences (afc and nfc) and within each, 4 divisions. Boxing should do the same! Let's say we have ibf, wba, wbo, and wbc. Each one ranks, say, 12 different fighters. Each "division" has fights like final four brackets (12 vs 1, 11 vs 2, etc...). The winner of each division, fights the winner of another division, until there's one champ. That person is the undisputed champ for a time, and then the brackets start all over again. By doing this you know when, where, and who a fighter will fight. There will be no bullshit about one fighter ducking another. No bullshit 10 month layoffs, etc... Structure. Might seem a bit unrealistic and tough to actually implement, but who knows maybe it would work in one form or another. I think it would be good for boxing to mimic the other sports in some cases. I also think it would be good for boxing to take advantage of some of the things it has that other sports do not: fighter access. Consider this, my brother currently works out at Gleason's in brooklyn, ny. His trainer is Raul Frank. How cool is that? You have a pro training you (not only that he's fighting for #1 or #2 ranking (ibf) tonight). Yesterday afternoon he walks in and looks in one of the rings and sees John Duddy training. Again, that's pretty cool. Imagine you go meet up with some friends to play ball and Jason Kidd and Dwayne Wade are shooting around next to you (ok, Frank and Duddy aren't Kidd and Wade, but you get my point ;). So, is boxing dead? No, it's not, but there's a saying that "if you're not getting better, you're getting worse". Boxing is not doing anything to be more mainstream and because of this you can argue it is dying (go to espn, you'll see dropdowns for all sports but not boxing. you have to click "more+" and boxing is there with things like bass fishing. sad, no?). Excellent post. I'm not too crazy about the brackets idea, but overall I agree with everything said.

why do stupid yanks with IQ's of 1 say HELL???????? it sounds sooooo stupid.. You are one to talk... you might be the dumbest motherfucker on here hands down. Did your mom's cunt need sewed back up from the tear I ripped into her? :la:

If boxing were dead, id be the first one to admit it. But boxing is not dead. In fact, from what im seeing, it seems to be very slightly on the rise. It certainly isnt dropping down in popularity any more. A sport is dead, when two of the best in the sport cannot sell out a stadium even when they fight eachother. But Klitschko sold over 15,000 seats against CALVIN BROCK. Miguel Cotto, who isnt even in his prime yet, Can sell out the garden when he fights Margarito in June. Manny pacquioa fights are shown in imax theatres in the phillapines. He could sell out football stadiums if the fought there. Floyd Mayweather, maybe the most skilled but definetly not the most entertaining, sold over 10,000 seats and 300,000 ppv buys to see him fight CARLOS BALDOMIR WINKY WRIGHT, a fighter everyone seems to think is boring, sold almost as many seats agaisnt QUARTEY as Klitschko did against Brock! JERMAIN TAYLOR sold over 12,000 seats when he fought KASSIM OUMA! JAMES TONEY and SAMUEL PETER nearly sold out the Staple center when they fought for the first time. Hell, The contender Finale nearly sold out the Staple Center! MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA will sell over 18,000 seats when they fight in may. With nearly 2,000,000 ppv buys. How can a sport be dead, and still draw the people. Boxing may have been dying, but when the best fighters of this era, and the most exciting fighers of this era, do very well in ticket sales and ppv sales... the sport isnt dying... THERE IS JUST A LACK OF TALENT!!!! Lets assume for a second, that the average ppv sales for an HBO event is 300,000. And, i know i watch all ppv fights with at least 2 other guys. Im sure people watch the fights with a lot more, and some watch with less. but lets call 3 people the average. Well that means there are almost 1,000,000 people in the US, watching the BIG fights on HBO. please... enlighten me... And lets also consider, when a BIG fight rolls around, like MAYWEATHER-DLH, the fight dominates the media for months. Lewis Tyson did it, DLH-Trinidad did it. It gets a looot of attention. Just becasue boxing HAILS in comparison to the 137,000,000 million people who watched super bowl 37, doesnt mean it is a dead sport. Or even dying. It may be losing some lust, or some popularity, but when u attract that amount of people you are a struggling sport, but not a dead one. why do stupid yanks with IQ's of 1 say HELL???????? it sounds sooooo stupid..

It is not convienant for writers to cover boxing. It's pricey. Networks aren't as keen on covering it as other sports because they dont end up airing the big fights, so why hype them up? There's alot of reasons to it realli

If boxing were dead, id be the first one to admit it. But boxing is not dead. In fact, from what im seeing, it seems to be very slightly on the rise. It certainly isnt dropping down in popularity any more. A sport is dead, when two of the best in the sport cannot sell out a stadium even when they fight eachother. But Klitschko sold over 15,000 seats against CALVIN BROCK. Miguel Cotto, who isnt even in his prime yet, Can sell out the garden when he fights Margarito in June. Manny pacquioa fights are shown in imax theatres in the phillapines. He could sell out football stadiums if the fought there. Floyd Mayweather, maybe the most skilled but definetly not the most entertaining, sold over 10,000 seats and 300,000 ppv buys to see him fight CARLOS BALDOMIR WINKY WRIGHT, a fighter everyone seems to think is boring, sold almost as many seats agaisnt QUARTEY as Klitschko did against Brock! JERMAIN TAYLOR sold over 12,000 seats when he fought KASSIM OUMA! JAMES TONEY and SAMUEL PETER nearly sold out the Staple center when they fought for the first time. Hell, The contender Finale nearly sold out the Staple Center! MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA will sell over 18,000 seats when they fight in may. With nearly 2,000,000 ppv buys. How can a sport be dead, and still draw the people. Boxing may have been dying, but when the best fighters of this era, and the most exciting fighers of this era, do very well in ticket sales and ppv sales... the sport isnt dying... THERE IS JUST A LACK OF TALENT!!!! Lets assume for a second, that the average ppv sales for an HBO event is 300,000. And, i know i watch all ppv fights with at least 2 other guys. Im sure people watch the fights with a lot more, and some watch with less. but lets call 3 people the average. Well that means there are almost 1,000,000 people in the US, watching the BIG fights on HBO. please... enlighten me... And lets also consider, when a BIG fight rolls around, like MAYWEATHER-DLH, the fight dominates the media for months. Lewis Tyson did it, DLH-Trinidad did it. It gets a looot of attention. Just becasue boxing HAILS in comparison to the 137,000,000 million people who watched super bowl 37, doesnt mean it is a dead sport. Or even dying. It may be losing some lust, or some popularity, but when u attract that amount of people you are a struggling sport, but not a dead one. True if boxing were really that low then we wouldnt be having 2007 the year of the superfight Just wait boxing is definetaly on rise with all the great fights happening and de la hoya v.s mayweather jr being called the biggest non heavyweight fight in the history of boxing (although we dont know if its true yet) boxing is definetaly rising.

If boxing were dead, id be the first one to admit it. But boxing is not dead. In fact, from what im seeing, it seems to be very slightly on the rise. It certainly isnt dropping down in popularity any more. A sport is dead, when two of the best in the sport cannot sell out a stadium even when they fight eachother. But Klitschko sold over 15,000 seats against CALVIN BROCK. Miguel Cotto, who isnt even in his prime yet, Can sell out the garden when he fights Margarito in June. Manny pacquioa fights are shown in imax theatres in the phillapines. He could sell out football stadiums if the fought there. Floyd Mayweather, maybe the most skilled but definetly not the most entertaining, sold over 10,000 seats and 300,000 ppv buys to see him fight CARLOS BALDOMIR WINKY WRIGHT, a fighter everyone seems to think is boring, sold almost as many seats agaisnt QUARTEY as Klitschko did against Brock! JERMAIN TAYLOR sold over 12,000 seats when he fought KASSIM OUMA! JAMES TONEY and SAMUEL PETER nearly sold out the Staple center when they fought for the first time. Hell, The contender Finale nearly sold out the Staple Center! MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA will sell over 18,000 seats when they fight in may. With nearly 2,000,000 ppv buys. How can a sport be dead, and still draw the people. Boxing may have been dying, but when the best fighters of this era, and the most exciting fighers of this era, do very well in ticket sales and ppv sales... the sport isnt dying... THERE IS JUST A LACK OF TALENT!!!! Lets assume for a second, that the average ppv sales for an HBO event is 300,000. And, i know i watch all ppv fights with at least 2 other guys. Im sure people watch the fights with a lot more, and some watch with less. but lets call 3 people the average. Well that means there are almost 1,000,000 people in the US, watching the BIG fights on HBO. please... enlighten me... And lets also consider, when a BIG fight rolls around, like MAYWEATHER-DLH, the fight dominates the media for months. Lewis Tyson did it, DLH-Trinidad did it. It gets a looot of attention. Just becasue boxing HAILS in comparison to the 137,000,000 million people who watched super bowl 37, doesnt mean it is a dead sport. Or even dying. It may be losing some lust, or some popularity, but when u attract that amount of people you are a struggling sport, but not a dead one. Kball, You make some good points but I think in some very real way boxing is, in fact, a dead sport in this country (talkin usa here). It is true that more networks show fights now than ever before. It is true that more fights are broadcast now than ever before. It is true that more money is generated now than ever before. Unfortunately it is also true that if you go into Brooklyn, NY, and ask someone who Collazo or Judah is, you'll get a blank stare. One could easily argue that the increased exposure and extra revenue of boxing is attributed simply to the fact that we have data flying all of the place nowadays (internet, hand held devices, satellite, cable, etc...). This means for fans of boxing, you will see more fights (great), but what is being done to get more/new fans? The fact is, there are more fights being shown now and there is more money being generated. So, how is it possible that the sport generates more money now than in any other point in its history yet can be a "dead sport"? Two ways: 1 - American Culture 2 - Lack of structure within boxing Allow me to elaborate on those points... #1 American Culture: The big three here are football, baseball, and basketball. You can buy things like trading cards, sneakers, and jerseys. Anything like that exist for boxing? no. How about publications? Sports illustrated is out every week covering these sports. When any boxing mag comes out it's literally months out of date. These other sports are in people's faces 24x7 (think about how huge fantasy sports are as well). More importantly though, is the built-in audience these other sports have that boxing doesnt have. People grow up playing these other sports. People grow up playing little league baseball and pop warner football; how many people grow up boxing? Very few. This is important because people contine to play in high school and in college. Even if they never turn pro, the love of the game (from playing all those years) is there. Boxing has no such audience. This is why mma has the potential to be much larger than boxing; wrestling is a fairly popular sport in the US at the high school and college level. Now these kids have a pro sport to be interested in when their hs/college careers are over - again, a built-in audience that boxing simply does not have. It's an uphill battle. #2 Lack of structure within boxing: I love the fact that despite my busy work schedule I can go online, check out the mets schedule and make plans to see a game months ahead of time. You can't do this in boxing. Let's say you're a diehard winky wright fan and you wanna plan your schedule to see him fight. ok, when is he fighting next? who is he fighting? where is he fighting? See, it's bullshit, you can't do that. Boxing needs scheduling structure. How is this possible? Take boxing's biggest weakness and turn it into a strength. I am talking about the different sanctioning bodies (ibf,wbc, etc...). Consider this, in football (american) you have two conferences (afc and nfc) and within each, 4 divisions. Boxing should do the same! Let's say we have ibf, wba, wbo, and wbc. Each one ranks, say, 12 different fighters. Each "division" has fights like final four brackets (12 vs 1, 11 vs 2, etc...). The winner of each division, fights the winner of another division, until there's one champ. That person is the undisputed champ for a time, and then the brackets start all over again. By doing this you know when, where, and who a fighter will fight. There will be no bullshit about one fighter ducking another. No bullshit 10 month layoffs, etc... Structure. Might seem a bit unrealistic and tough to actually implement, but who knows maybe it would work in one form or another. I think it would be good for boxing to mimic the other sports in some cases. I also think it would be good for boxing to take advantage of some of the things it has that other sports do not: fighter access. Consider this, my brother currently works out at Gleason's in brooklyn, ny. His trainer is Raul Frank. How cool is that? You have a pro training you (not only that he's fighting for #1 or #2 ranking (ibf) tonight). Yesterday afternoon he walks in and looks in one of the rings and sees John Duddy training. Again, that's pretty cool. Imagine you go meet up with some friends to play ball and Jason Kidd and Dwayne Wade are shooting around next to you (ok, Frank and Duddy aren't Kidd and Wade, but you get my point ;). So, is boxing dead? No, it's not, but there's a saying that "if you're not getting better, you're getting worse". Boxing is not doing anything to be more mainstream and because of this you can argue it is dying (go to espn, you'll see dropdowns for all sports but not boxing. you have to click "more+" and boxing is there with things like bass fishing. sad, no?).

If boxing were dead, id be the first one to admit it. But boxing is not dead. In fact, from what im seeing, it seems to be very slightly on the rise. It certainly isnt dropping down in popularity any more. A sport is dead, when two of the best in the sport cannot sell out a stadium even when they fight eachother. But Klitschko sold over 15,000 seats against CALVIN BROCK. Miguel Cotto, who isnt even in his prime yet, Can sell out the garden when he fights Margarito in June. Manny pacquioa fights are shown in imax theatres in the phillapines. He could sell out football stadiums if the fought there. Floyd Mayweather, maybe the most skilled but definetly not the most entertaining, sold over 10,000 seats and 300,000 ppv buys to see him fight CARLOS BALDOMIR WINKY WRIGHT, a fighter everyone seems to think is boring, sold almost as many seats agaisnt QUARTEY as Klitschko did against Brock! JERMAIN TAYLOR sold over 12,000 seats when he fought KASSIM OUMA! JAMES TONEY and SAMUEL PETER nearly sold out the Staple center when they fought for the first time. Hell, The contender Finale nearly sold out the Staple Center! MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA will sell over 18,000 seats when they fight in may. With nearly 2,000,000 ppv buys. How can a sport be dead, and still draw the people. Boxing may have been dying, but when the best fighters of this era, and the most exciting fighers of this era, do very well in ticket sales and ppv sales... the sport isnt dying... THERE IS JUST A LACK OF TALENT!!!! Lets assume for a second, that the average ppv sales for an HBO event is 300,000. And, i know i watch all ppv fights with at least 2 other guys. Im sure people watch the fights with a lot more, and some watch with less. but lets call 3 people the average. Well that means there are almost 1,000,000 people in the US, watching the BIG fights on HBO. please... enlighten me... And lets also consider, when a BIG fight rolls around, like MAYWEATHER-DLH, the fight dominates the media for months. Lewis Tyson did it, DLH-Trinidad did it. It gets a looot of attention. Just becasue boxing HAILS in comparison to the 137,000,000 million people who watched super bowl 37, doesnt mean it is a dead sport. Or even dying. It may be losing some lust, or some popularity, but when u attract that amount of people you are a struggling sport, but not a dead one. it aint dead but the powers that be are slowly killing it. it's a fact that fight fans and the general public are sick and tired of poorly judged fights and promoters robbing people with bullshit PPV's and other scams, not to forget the shady ass sanctioning bodies with their corrupt ass politics coupled with the the sleezy lawyers, promoters, and such. the way i see it there are more people trying to cash in on boxing while running it into the ground verses the people trying to restore and help nurture boxing back to mainstream and back to it's rightful place, the greatest sport ever. numbers are one thing preception is everything and the way people(general people/basically the majority of people) perceive boxing as a corrupt sport, plain and simple, people want fairness and boxing is far from fair. plus i forgot about fighters taking the easy route and not making the fights that the fight fans want to see, we're getting some here and there but fights that should be made aren't getting made and that hurts things too, it hurts the attraction and the perception of what a world champ should be.

Boxing is regaining some popularity in the UK what with Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe and a couple of smaller names like Maccarinelli and Witter. Not quite at the level of Bruno, Benn and Eubank but Hatton in particular is making strides into the national consciousness.

The sport isn't dead but it's not in good shape. Hasn't been for sure. Had a brief resurgence with Tyson in the 80's, and it coasted on that until the late 90's, but it's been a steep downhill slide since then. Vitali, Wlad, and Peter are the last hope. Maybe Sultan, depending on how he does vs. Briggs. I think having Vitali back helps. I would love to see him fight, he's an amazing fighter.

The sport isn't dead but it's not in good shape. Hasn't been for sure. Had a brief resurgence with Tyson in the 80's, and it coasted on that until the late 90's, but it's been a steep downhill slide since then. Vitali, Wlad, and Peter are the last hope. Maybe Sultan, depending on how he does vs. Briggs.

The sport isn't dead but it's not in good shape. Hasn't been for sure. Had a brief resurgence with Tyson in the 80's, and it coasted on that until the late 90's, but it's been a steep downhill slide since then. Vitali, Wlad, and Peter are the last hope. Maybe Sultan, depending on how he does vs. Briggs.

If boxing were dead, id be the first one to admit it. But boxing is not dead. In fact, from what im seeing, it seems to be very slightly on the rise. It certainly isnt dropping down in popularity any more. A sport is dead, when two of the best in the sport cannot sell out a stadium even when they fight eachother. But Klitschko sold over 15,000 seats against CALVIN BROCK. Miguel Cotto, who isnt even in his prime yet, Can sell out the garden when he fights Margarito in June. Manny pacquioa fights are shown in imax theatres in the phillapines. He could sell out football stadiums if the fought there. Floyd Mayweather, maybe the most skilled but definetly not the most entertaining, sold over 10,000 seats and 300,000 ppv buys to see him fight CARLOS BALDOMIR WINKY WRIGHT, a fighter everyone seems to think is boring, sold almost as many seats agaisnt QUARTEY as Klitschko did against Brock! JERMAIN TAYLOR sold over 12,000 seats when he fought KASSIM OUMA! JAMES TONEY and SAMUEL PETER nearly sold out the Staple center when they fought for the first time. Hell, The contender Finale nearly sold out the Staple Center! MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA will sell over 18,000 seats when they fight in may. With nearly 2,000,000 ppv buys. How can a sport be dead, and still draw the people. Boxing may have been dying, but when the best fighters of this era, and the most exciting fighers of this era, do very well in ticket sales and ppv sales... the sport isnt dying... THERE IS JUST A LACK OF TALENT!!!! Lets assume for a second, that the average ppv sales for an HBO event is 300,000. And, i know i watch all ppv fights with at least 2 other guys. Im sure people watch the fights with a lot more, and some watch with less. but lets call 3 people the average. Well that means there are almost 1,000,000 people in the US, watching the BIG fights on HBO. please... enlighten me... And lets also consider, when a BIG fight rolls around, like MAYWEATHER-DLH, the fight dominates the media for months. Lewis Tyson did it, DLH-Trinidad did it. It gets a looot of attention. Just becasue boxing HAILS in comparison to the 137,000,000 million people who watched super bowl 37, doesnt mean it is a dead sport. Or even dying. It may be losing some lust, or some popularity, but when u attract that amount of people you are a struggling sport, but not a dead one. Its not dead, its just now niche whereas before it was mainstream. If there are two boxers the "average person" knows in boxing its the Klit bros, despite the fact that one hasn't fought in over 2 years, so I would expect that to do well. Cotto is puerto rican, and fights at msg the night before the puerto rican day parade. questionable sell out if he were to fight there on any other night. Manny is an icon in the Philipinnes, as are most superstars from third world countries. Not just boxing, but anything. HBO did a good job hyping up Mayweather v Baldomir, but let me ask you, how many tickets did he sell in Portland vs mitchell? Winky fought in his home state, maybe even in his back yard if I recall. people love cheering for the local guy. could he have done that if he fought somewhere else? Same thing with Taylor. A fight like Toney-Peter should sell out the staples centre. if only there were fights like that more often. Finally, when was the last time a boxing event did nearly 2 million ppv buys? or even one million, sans Tyson-Lewis? boxing is not dead, but it is dying, and it is even more apparent by comparing the numbers of a similar sport, MMA.

i think there are new fans coming to the sport, just not as fast as people are jumping on the UFC bandwagon. boxing will never die, there will always be the hardcore fans if everyone else fucks off Nothing in this world dies as long as the internet is around.

I think boxing is on the rise. I became a boxing fanatic in November 2005 when I watched an 80's Tyson(ya I jumped on the Tyson bandwagon 20 years too late :D). Boxing is without a dought the greatest sport ever. And im pumped that I may get to see Vitali in the ring. I never got to watch him back in the day. i think there are new fans coming to the sport, just not as fast as people are jumping on the UFC bandwagon. boxing will never die, there will always be the hardcore fans if everyone else fucks off

I think boxing is on the rise. I became a boxing fanatic in November 2005 when I watched an 80's Tyson(ya I jumped on the Tyson bandwagon 20 years too late :D). Boxing is without a dought the greatest sport ever. And im pumped that I may get to see Vitali in the ring. I never got to watch him back in the day.

.....I'm even more tired of people talking shit about the heavies. Just remember, as the heavies go so goes boxing. :) Well the heavies are gone right now in public interest, at least in the US. Maybe not in RUSSIA or GERMANY. Which is more reason why the sport cant sell out. But when has a division ever died permanantly? lol. The heavies will be back very soon

.....I'm even more tired of people talking shit about the heavies. Just remember, as the heavies go so goes boxing. :)