It's been a bad year for boxing.....why though???

[*TonyMontana*]

I blame mayweather!!!!
He's behind all things bad in boxing
Discuss

[////]

It definitely felt like boxing died to the US mainstream about half way through the mayweather-pacquaio fight. I don't think any sporting event in human history has had such a terrible hype vs boredom ratio. Will take years to recover if ever.

[RiC-DiC]

what the average fan has witnessed this year: canelo ducked GG to fight Liam Smith, GG fought a WW and should have moved up, Fury vs Klitschko was a sparring match, Joshua became paper champ without beating anybody of note, Danny Garcia still hasn't defended the vacant belt he won in January, fighters failing drug tests and delaying fights etc... It's been bad because champions aren't fighting legit contenders... and we are just waiting for Kovalev-Ward and Walters-Lomachenko.

I'm not even sure what my favorite FOTY has been so far.. probably either LSC-Frampton or Thurman-Porter.. maybe I'm getting amnesia but no fights have been that memorable for me this year.

[Sadiqkingofko]

It was bad but wasn't as bad as people make it out to be
1-16-16 Wilder/Spzilika
1-23-16 Garcia/Gurrero
1-23-16 Breazeale/Mansour
2-27-16 Frampton/Quigg
3-5-16 Browne/Chagaev
3-5-16 Vargas/Ali
3-26-16 Ward/Barrera
4-2-16 Duhapas/Helenius
4-2-16 Molina/Adamek
4-9-16 Joshua/Martin
4-9-16 Gvozdyk/Mohamedi
4-9-16 Valdez/Grodvich
4-9-16 Ramirez/Abraham
4-9-16 Pacquaio/Bradley
4-16-16 Spence/Algeri
4-16-16 Glowchki/Cunningham
4-23-16 Gonzalez/Arroyo
4-30-16 Washington/Chambers
4-30-16 Lara/Montiel
4-30-16 Williams Jr/Rodriguez
4-30-16 Berto/Ortiz
4-30-16 Jack/Bute
5-7-16 Pulev/Chisora
5-7-16 Stevens/Tixeria
5-7-16 Canelo/Khan
5-21-16 Parker/Takam
5-21-16 Lebedev/Ramirez
5-21-16 Haye/Gjeraj
5-21-16 Lara/Martirosyan
5-21-16 Charlo/Trout
6-4-16 Vargas/Salido
6-11-16 Andrade/Nelson
6-11-16 Molina/Provodnikov
6-11-16 Lomachenko/Maritnez
6-25-16 Groves/Murray
6-25-16 Thurman/Porter
7-16-16 Diaz/Vazquez
7-23-16 Valdez/Rueda
7-23-16 Crawford/Postol
7-29-16 Stevenson/Williams Jr
7-30-16 Garcia/Rojas
7-30-16 Harrison/Rabchenko
7-30-16 Frampton/Cruz
9-10-16 Golovkin/Brook
9-10-16 Gonzalez/Cuadras
9-17-16 Monroe/Rosado
9-17-16 Canelo/Smith
9-24-16 Linares/Crolla
I know August and October has nothing but it was a decent year and we got
11-5-16 Pacquaio/Vargas
11-12-16 Ortiz/Scott
11-19-16 Ward/Kovalev
11-26-16 Lomachenko/Walters
12-10-16 Joshua/Molina
12-10-16 Charlo/J-Rock
12-10-16 Culler/Mares
12-10-16 Crawford/Molina Jr
12-10-16 Kaufmann/Austin
12-10-16 Ruiz/Parker
12-17-16 Povetkin/Stiverne

[Trs45]

You have boxers talking the talking and not walking the walk. For example chris eubank jr BJS canelo All talk. There's a lot of good fights to be made. We keep hearing that they'll get made and then nothing happens. That's what's dragging boxing down. Thurman porter and frampton cruz did happen but apart from that nothing much else. Now kovalev ward. If there was more of these match ups boxing would definitely be back in the mainstream media.

[TheCleaner]

the whole idea of marinating is getting very boring, but it hasn't been such a bad year given that both of the UK's welters that we'd hoped fight each other both ended up in 'take-you-by-huge-surprise' payday match ups with middleweights, the 2 middleweights you'd really like to see fight each other too. All the PED/drug stuff has wrecked the HW fights this year.. Fury-Wlad, Wilder-Povetkin, even all that stuff with Chaegev Browne, still worrying. We also got david haye back, on free tv which is passable, but I wish he'd have got in there with something better than what would be a low level sparring partner to him.

A lot can be redeemed finally seeing Ward-Kov, Loma-Walters, and the salido vargas fight was amazing, FOTY contender, and the loma-martinez ending was also spectacular.

[Eff Pandas]

I feel that in recent years there has been more of a business approach to boxing that really seemed to hit a point of critical mass this year. You can blame Haymon with his pile of money. You can blame Arum with his penny pinching ways. You can blame HBO with its hardline grasp on keeping its fighters on HBO despite not having the money to pay guys for their biggest fights. You can blame Canelo for the most high profiling ducking situation in a big fight since Bowe ducked Lewis. You can probably blame a few dozen other things & its probably a little bit of all of them, but that business-like approach to boxing by more people in boxing I think has been the biggest thing pulling this year to being a subpar year for boxing.

To me boxing needs a heavy dose of making the fights people wanna see for awhile. And maybe some money gets burned for awhile in the process cuz fans have been so turned off to boxing for so long, but ultimately who doesn't like watching mfers trying to knock each other the f#ck out & people will come back...but it could take awhile to win the good graces of some of these fans who've felt like they've been treated like the abused, cheated on wife of the guy promising to never do it over & over & over & over again.

[Eff Pandas]

A lot can be redeemed finally seeing Ward-Kov, Loma-Walters, and the salido vargas fight was amazing, FOTY contender, and the loma-martinez ending was also spectacular.

Only if Kovalev KO's Ward or at least wins. If Ward wins its likely to have been a high level schooling by a higher skilled boxer over a highly skilled puncher. It'll be a 175 Mayweather vs Pacquiao basically. If Pacquiao had won Floyd vs Manny would have an entirely different historical narrative for the sport of boxing & a subpar overall fight would still be viewed as a overall positive experience by the paying viewing public at large.

And while agree the "lil guy" fights are going to be appealing the problem with lil guy fights is they seem to reach a lesser level of the boxing fan population largely cuz boxing fans tend to steer towards the bigger fighters in many countries, namely the US I guess, that makes those fights less impactful then they might otherwise have been.

[JJRod]

There actually were some pretty good fights this year, the problem was that they were too far in between.

Many fan favorite fighters fought only once, which is a damn shame. Guys like Thurman, Garcia, Porter, LSC, and others should be fighting 3 times a year.

[j0zef]

It's really not as bad as people make it out to be. Pbc has not been as active as we want, klit never got the fury rematch, pov-wilder never happened, cotto couldn't get a ppv date, and nobody still has balls to fight golovkin.

Outside of that, we've had some great fights this year, and Nov + Dec have some great matches!