The ESPN fight confirmed it: celebrities sell, boxers don’t

[ShaneMosleySr]

I went to Franco-Maloney 3 last night.

The place was filled to capacity for Nico Ali Walsh’s four round pro debut.

ESPN promoted it more than the main event.

Over half the crowd came around the time of that fight and left before the start of Franco-Maloney 3.

The celebrity ringside presence (flava flave) was there for that fight, not Franco-Maloney 3.

There were Ali shirts everywhere.

Multiple people who came to watch the entire card asked me if they had accidentally missed Franco-Maloney 3 on the undercard.

Nico Ali Walsh was the real main event, despite the billing.

This confirms to me that celebrities are about to take over boxing completely.

No one in that arena cared about any boxer more than they cared about remembering a dead celebrity through his grandchild.

[paulf]

I'm from Tulsa. It's not a boxing town. From 2010-2020 there might have been one FNF-level fight or above in the town. They only started having boxing events there because of the Trump rally last year (I'm serious, it's like promoters forgot the place existed until it got back in national news).

The people the came to see Walsh wouldn't have come to see boxing otherwise.

You can't just airdrop an event into a town that isn't regularly having that sport and expect it to do well. Same thing happened when Hearn did that show in Wichita a couple years ago with Rios and Miller on the card. No one came.

[PBR Streetgang]

The promotion for the grandson of Ali felt exploitive and farcical to me. It would be one thing if he could fight but, based off of what I saw, he's not terribly good.

It was a bit ironic that, on the same card, you had two different guys (Nico and Trey) wearing the iconic boxing shorts of their more accomplished relatives...and they were the main attractions.