The boxing media landscape

[dan-b]

The boxing media landscape consists mostly of young men generating clickbait content on a YouTube channel. Many of these are embedded with certain promoters and ask timid, leading and unlettered questions. No accountability, no investigation, no editorial/publishing standards.

In a sport so filled with questionable business practices and shady operators, we need to do better than this. Dan Rafael did some decent work holding the WBA to account with his #WretchedWBA campaign. Thomas Hauser has published quality work for decades.

What other respectable journalists/media operators does boxing have?

[daggum]

most of boxing media is like fox "news" just pure propaganda so people can hear what they want to hear. why has tank never fought a top 5 guy his entire career? that would be a good question to ask of tank and his team, but alas its like we already know hes never going to fight a real threat so we just move on and praise him and how great he is for knocking over tomato cans, teeny tiny men, drained opponents, etc...if someone ever did write an article or made a valid criticism of someone like tank, they would be shunned and wouldnt be able to work in boxing. it is a very small circle after all, which is why we get filled with crap articles and quotes direct from someones team and its taken as truth, but if you look at the real truth, tank isnt fighting anyone good and has no plans to fight anyone good. they expect us to be in on the grift with them yet im not seeing any of the money thats coming from it so why would i partake in it? if i was in boxing media i would actively have an antagonistic relationship with a lot of people, not because i want to, but because they are such liars and frauds. you have to be a yes man to succeed in boxing media. look how tanks in the top 10 p4p. laughable! has anyone ever been in the top 10 p4p without beating a top 5 fighter? oh maybe its because he won 2 interim belts in 2 divisions? amazing stuff! lopez has beaten 2 #1 guys and hes lower on the list than tank whose best win was ranked #6 derrp. failure

[Marchegiano]

None man ... in fact you've successfully softened me on Dan.


Sadly, the same is pretty true for history. Maybe not as bad as journalism, but I think it's still fair to say most boxing history writers write propaganda, have a hard time admitting they don't know something, write fiction like its fact in hopes no one actually looks up the sources they cite to reveal their lies, but worst of all it's a circle jerk with very little in the way of ideas. Boxing historians mind, not historians who happened to cover boxing in some form during their career.

Guys who write history books about boxing tend to seek consensus, and by way of consensus, bully or be bullied. Which of course results in a narrow market of ideas where writers disagree with their official stance and outline why it's so wrong but also refuse to step out of line for fear of their credibility taking a hit in the boxing community because the majority of boxing historians disagree. This usually comes in the form of beginning and ending with the consensus thought while posing a possibility in the middle.

This is antithetical to how the historians who happen to cover boxing at some point seem to work. The dudes at Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Yale, etc. tend to give very little ****s about the consensus narrative on the bit of history they study. They make their cases, cite their sources, list a range of possibles, but make stance for why they lean heavier on one possible more than the other, and, said lean will never feature anything like agreeing with the majority.

It's a big difference really. A guy who covers say ancient Greek history will do a bit of Greek boxing coverage too. That quality historian really shows just how **** the life dedicated boxing historians actually are. Because they're just fans who wrote books, they're not real historians and when you juxtapose them against real historians they look ... silly.



Okay this is a ramble but just stick with me.


And I think that's where we find our general overlap that covers all of boxing writing, period. Boxing historians are **** historians but they are pretty goddamn excellent fans. Likewise, journalists are ****ty journalists because they're mostly fans too. Dudes like Pierce Egan in bare knuckle days wrote what he wrote because he liked boxing.

So, even though they're ****, hey man, they're pretty good though too. All just fans doing their best, getting corrupted and ****, charmed, you know. It's easy for promoters because the people covering them can be start struck by their clients.

[Marchegiano]

Oh snap, our own Cliff though, he's a good one too. At least on par with Dan.

[Zaroku]

most of boxing media is like fox "news" just pure propaganda so people can hear what they want to hear. why has tank never fought a top 5 guy his entire career? that would be a good question to ask of tank and his team, but alas its like we already know hes never going to fight a real threat so we just move on and praise him and how great he is for knocking over tomato cans, teeny tiny men, drained opponents, etc...if someone ever did write an article or made a valid criticism of someone like tank, they would be shunned and wouldnt be able to work in boxing. it is a very small circle after all, which is why we get filled with crap articles and quotes direct from someones team and its taken as truth, but if you look at the real truth, tank isnt fighting anyone good and has no plans to fight anyone good. they expect us to be in on the grift with them yet im not seeing any of the money thats coming from it so why would i partake in it? if i was in boxing media i would actively have an antagonistic relationship with a lot of people, not because i want to, but because they are such liars and frauds. you have to be a yes man to succeed in boxing media. look how tanks in the top 10 p4p. laughable! has anyone ever been in the top 10 p4p without beating a top 5 fighter? oh maybe its because he won 2 interim belts in 2 divisions? amazing stuff! lopez has beaten 2 #1 guys and hes lower on the list than tank whose best win was ranked #6 derrp. failure

But if you keep repeating bull crap long enough casual fools will parrot the narrative