Reasons why boxing is unfortunately not so popular in the U.S.

and because americans prefer watching 2 guys wrstle around for 5 minutes a round im messing with ya but it is a shame that theres not many true boxing fans in comparison,i think your first point has a lot to do it with it aswell

They would love to see his downfall though.

What a great inspiration Mayweather is for all American fans!

Boxing is doing very well in the UK at the moment.

No one wants to become boxers. It's high risk and low reward. You look at the boxing greats, most have turned out bad. Louis Robinson Tyson Holyfeild Ali and so on. When kids see this they are turned off. Now compare to NBA or NFL. You got guys like Jordan who is retired yet is still cashing it in. Then you got guys like Lebron Kobe Howard and so on. They are getting paid million for playing a sport without risking their lives. Also people would rather follow a team sport than a individual sport. Boxing is falling off big time around the USA. Depending on where you live, there's still plenty of interest in the sport among our youth. Boxing has been pretty much at the same level for awhile now, not really dropping off anymore and most-likely won't. But it most-likely won't rise up again either unless some serious changes are made. For the most part you have to be pretty tall to make it in basketball and pretty big to make it in football...in general. I can see how this affects the heavyweight division and lack of quality American fighters in that weight class, but boxing allows athletes of different sizes to compete and potentially become champions and stars.

The alphabet soup titles prevent a true champion being established and confuses the average fan. Also the fights in general are sub-par. The best don't fight the best, so why would people drop 50 bones to see one good matchup that may or may not turnout to be a great fight. Until boxing is ran like a real sport where the best fight the best it will continue to struggle.

Another reason is today's youth that have the attention span of a 2yr old. They would rather see guys winging wild,sloppy,looping punches than appreciate a fighter displaying defense and technique. Boxing will be fine but unfortuantley it will never be mainstream again unless it gets good fights on regular cable and gets rid of sanctioning bodies which will never happen.

Good quality post and I agree. Also thank you for not bringing up a stupid point like many belive that MMA takes away from Boxing, what people don't realize is that MMA takes away from WWE. but at the same time don't you think the WWE takes away from both? since it appears on basic cable weekly and probably is bigger in popularity than both fight sports. granted I see your point regarding the MMA/WWE comparison, since demographically they target the same market (18-35 white males I believe) but don't you think that the WWE's popularity would leak over ... just generally speaking? and what fanbase does/is boxing supposed to target, I'd like to know. and regarding the original topic, I felt this was one of the stronger points. "2. No more boxing on free TV. They have the Friday Night fights on ESPN but those are usually up and comers or past their prime fighters, there are no championship bouts or even big names that fight on regular TV. You must have HBO or Showtime which both cost more money on the bill so most people dont have them." as if your your trying to market a sport (be it football, golf, baseball or in this case boxing) a good idea to expand that potential fanbase is to have the sport seen by as many people as possible. which leads into the second part I bolded. Since so many of the big boxing fights are on either, PPV, HBO or Showtime, boxing is doing the exact opposite of expanding their potential market as widely as possible .... there limiting it to those who have Premium cable and or PPV buyers.

imagine if the fights were free, damn the following would grow immensely. Nobody wants to drop 50 on a TV screen.

yeah, I think boxing in the u.s would benefit greatly, popularity wise if there was an elite white american boxer. Pavlik still has a chance but a lot of people abandoned him after he lost to Bernard He doesnt have to be white he just has to be from the US

No one wants to become boxers. It's high risk and low reward. You look at the boxing greats, most have turned out bad. Louis Robinson Tyson Holyfeild Ali and so on. When kids see this they are turned off. Now compare to NBA or NFL. You got guys like Jordan who is retired yet is still cashing it in. Then you got guys like Lebron Kobe Howard and so on. They are getting paid million for playing a sport without risking their lives. Also people would rather follow a team sport than a individual sport. Boxing is falling off big time around the USA. hey homeless, do you want to make 2 dollars, horus the horse has a job for you tonight:booty:

I agree with everything except '3'. Which I suppose is true in the context of US boxing, even so, but IMHO is more than beneficial enough to world boxing to make up for it. An American HW champion is needed, though, to raise the profile of the sport in the US again. Of them all, I think PPV is actually the worst offender; it generates a lot of money short term but there is a long term price to pay. I remember when I was a kid, if you asked anyone (or anyone with any sort of interest in sport) if they had seen the 'big fight' on TV they would know who you were talking about, even if they hadn't watched. Today that isn't true, and if the parents don't watch, their kids won't watch and develop an interest. Then, where do the next generation of PPV buyers come from?

We need more black and white champions imo.

Good quality post and I agree. Also thank you for not bringing up a stupid point like many belive that MMA takes away from Boxing, what people don't realize is that MMA takes away from WWE.

Yea there messing this sport up bad by making us pay all this money for Wack fights.

All agreeable reasons, but not enuf to 'kill' boxing like some dumbasses suggest. Fukk MMA. Boxing ain't goin nowhere no matter how many problems it has.

First of all I want to say that boxing is the 1 and only sport I watch and I study everything about it. It really sucks to see that today boxing isnt even a fraction of as popular in the mainstream as it used to be. Here are some reasons I think its not as popular here in America. 1. The Heavyweight division has not been good since the 90's. The heavyweight division has always been the biggest draw in boxing and now with the division having almost nobody and all the champs being from Europe really hurts it I beleive. 2. No more boxing on free TV. They have the Friday Night fights on ESPN but those are usually up and comers or past their prime fighters, there are no championship bouts or even big names that fight on regular TV. You must have HBO or Showtime which both cost more money on the bill so most people dont have them. 3. Not many American champions or top fighters anymore. This means nothing to me, I dont care where they come from as long as they are good and entertaining I will support them. But to the general public and with a sport like boxing that is such a country pride sport, with most of the top guys being from foregin I think that might hurt it a little. 4.The last thing I think is because of all the WBA,WBC,IBF,WBO champions. There are too many belts and champions and too much politics and its very hard to understand if you arent a devoted fan. Now there are so many pointless belts that seem to come up more every year. I think there should be only 1 champion in the division and I think that since there can techincally be 4 or even 5 now that can be called champions of the division really hurts it more than it helps it. I am super disappointed that boxing is not very popluar here anymore, I only have 1 friend that likes boxing, eveyone else doesn't know what the hell I am talking about when I bring up the sport. I have wondered what the deal is today and after some thought this is what I came up with. Hopefully it changes, but regardless of how popular it is, I will always be watching it. I know exactly what you mean.. It's sad. There are not enough real boxing fans. There are plenty of guys that like one or two fighters and don't know anything else about other fighters. Too many people are on MMA's nuts right now, too. MMA is officially mainstream. Boxing is looked at as the "old man" sport by younger guys. But whats funny to me is how many top MMA fighters use boxing strategy's to win the majority of there fights.