The Effect Of Social Media On Boxing

I'm going to take a trip down memory lane. Back when the closest you thought you would get to your favorite fighter or world champion came in the form of a televised fight, a guest spot in a movie or tv show, or my favorite at the time was playing a video game and wiping the floor with everybody in 2 player competition. Boxing was not a common sport as the 1990s passed by. If you were in tune with the sport around your region you knew of only the local fighters if you had any... maybe. Then the 1990s were over and after the Y2K fears settled and got put to rest, new technology was coming at you all the time. Cellphones started getting smaller, a lot of people started ditching dial up internet connections, Motorola came out with the two way pager, and America Online seemed like it disappeared overnight but plenty of people kept the use of their AOL messenger screen names through the use of AIM. I wonder how many fighters that were amateurs in the NY metro area still have the old VHS copies of their fights that they bought from Bill Butterworth. Then chatrooms went away from the norm and these social media websites started coming about. The first social media website I started using was Myspace. There you could create your profile, edit your page, search for new networking connections in different places and well, connect to anybody you thought that posted some pretty sexy pictures. I was in my late teens into early 20's and the thirst was real. I used Myspace to connect to what I loved most, which was boxing. Anyone that used it should remember that you could put up your type 5 or whatever number friends directly on your page so everyone knew who you were connected to closely. When dealing with fighters, we all had other fighters in our top friends so you could find just about anybody. As amateurs you could connect to someone you met at a national, someone you may have sparred with, someone you had a fight with, or someone you just liked to watch fight. Younger professionals who were more tech savvy got in on the action. The first pros I remember following were Sechew "The Iron Horse" Powell and Peter "Kid Chocolate" Quillin. You could just pop in on their page and take a look at what fights they were at, training photos, and what type of clothes and jewelry they were wearing. It was a fun time for me because I could not only see these guys on the internet, but I could go to a fight at the Manhattan Center in New York City and see a lot of these fighters personally. You could chill outside while all of the people that paid for tickets were making their way in (if you were an amateur you didnt pay to get in, you just called up your connection on the inside and they let you in.. if you had connections). Later that night you upload all of your photos to whatever social media you had and faked like you were just as big a deal as the guys fighting. You got your fake clout very fast by doing that lol. You could reach out to someone who may not have had as big of a boxing scene (pun intended) in their hometown and develop something in common. You shared information with each other and built a connection through a dream of being the top dog some day. Now, you have some many different outlets to social media that you can just reach out and touch anyone on that is using the specific outlet. Now fighters encounter a lot of love and praise, a lot of hate and negativity, and a lot of attention that they may not want or need at that particular time. Things have changed to the fact that even a Charlie Zelenoff can irritate a Deontay Wilder or Floyd Mayweather Sr. to the point that they are going to put hands on him. Everybody is a keyboard world champion with the ring IQ of one thousand. When you win, you won, and when you lose, everybody saw it coming from a mile away. It is a very strange time that all you can do is laugh at a lot of the things you see and read. And just know that arrogance with blissful ignorance breeds audacity. Social media has made contact with your best prize fighter as simple as a click of a mouse and a press of a button. That is if the fighter is actually operating their social media. Right now is a point where boxing is changing and the fighters that are using social media to their advantage are gaining a lot of popularity very fast. Let's just hope that with their abundance in popularity comes a wealth of skill. I hope all fighters still able to compete learn how to intelligently use social media to their advantage. Just know that we are all watching.