What Has Happened To Boxing's Golden Age?

Sports fan or not, chances are you’ve heard of Sugar Ray Robinson, George Foreman, and Rocky Marciano. But unless you follow boxing, you probably haven’t heard of Antonio Margarito, who recently beat Miguel Cotto to become a three-time welterweight champion. This disparity may explain why boxing isn’t as popular as other U.S. sports today... So why aren’t we hearing boxers’ names alongside the likes of Brett Favre and Leon Powe? I know that everything goes in cycles, and hopefully there will be another golden age in boxing, even though Boxing is still popular in the United States, we have slipped from the levels of the past. This is due to competition from other sports. When there was a smaller baseball season and a smaller football season and no other major sport, boxing ruled. Now that the major sports have expanded and a huge variety of other sports are available for viewing, boxing is getting squeezed out. The nature of boxing prohibits it from being like other sports. A boxer only fights once, twice, or maybe three times a year. Their audience can’t match the audience of the N.Y. Yankees that play 162 times a year. However, when the exciting boxer has a date, he garners a huge one night audience. The statistics for Pay-Per-View bear this out. The largest audiences for any PPV shows are always boxing. We are getting many Eastern Europeans into the sport. They are the latest group of immigrants. Some are talented and if one or two superstars emerge the golden age will be here. The thing that excites the public is talent. If a boxer is talented, he is exciting and people want to follow him. Half the people love him and want him to win and half the people hate him and want him to lose. But they all watch and follow his career. There is always a possibility for a superstar. You can not predict when he will arrive. Since we are changing from one group of athletes (blacks) to others (Hispanics and Eastern Europeans), we are on down time. When the transition is complete the chances are better that the superstar will be there. Marketing always helps. But it really comes down to the boxer. If the boxer has talent and is exciting the marketing will spread the word. If the boxer is not talented and exciting the people will not continue to tune in. Boxing can be seen on TV seven nights a week, 52 weeks a year. That isn’t too bad. Boxing has several parts to it: Professional, which has some excitement and is on TV all the time, amateur, which is exciting but has very little viewership (there will be coverage of boxing in the Olympics), and recreational boxing which is bursting at the seams. Every gym in America today offers boxing classes. This growth in popularity has happened over the past 15 years. The golden age of boxing that you refer to in your question, 1920, is only one of many golden ages. The late 1700’s produced a golden age in America when the European (especially English) boxers brought the sport to our shores. The mid and later 1800’s had a tremendous amount of boxing all across America. Since the 1960’s we have had the Muhammad Ali era, The Sugar Ray Leonard era, and the Mike Tyson era. Yes, the 1920’s was an exciting time for boxing with the great influx of immigrants to The United States. The era produced more Jewish champions than any other sport. The Irish and Italians also excelled. In conclusion, I would like to state that boxing will be around long after the other sports are done away with. When there were the first three men on earth, two of them got into a fight and the third cheered them on. The same thing will happen when there are only three men left on earth again. I have heard the sport of boxing being compared to the sport of horse racing. This reference is not especially directed at modern-day boxing. Usually the reference has to do with the boxer being treated like a horse. The boxer, usually, has very little to say about when he fights, who he fights, how often he fights, how much he will earn per fight, or anything else about his career. Also, like a horse, anything can happen on a given day … I think this type of comparison is disrespectful to the boxer. The only way we can increase the popularity of boxing is to take small steps and inform one person at a time. I don’t believe that boxing will ever be able to compare in popularity to baseball or football. America was built on these sports — even soccer has a hard time competing. as far as boxing is concerned, we have to first try to open the eyes of people who are against boxing. To some boxing is a sport that’s too barbaric and should be banned from television; where I can personally say that boxing has saved my life and turned my life around completely. Boxing is a sport where two athletes are trying to out think each other like a game of chess, trying hard to set the other person up for checkmate. In chess we use pawns and various other pieces to control the middle of the board. In boxing we use our jab along with other punches to control the tempo of the match. When you look outside the box and look at the bigger picture, boxing is a sport that brings out the best in an individual in all aspects of their life. The only way we can increase the popularity of boxing is to take small steps and inform one person at a time. Unfortunately good news doesn’t spread as quickly as bad news.