Is there a way to remove promoters from the sport?

[Eff Pandas]

Boxing's biggest problem is its obsession with someone remaining undefeated. The instant a fighter loses, they are "exposed", or a "hype job", etc etc. Part of that problem is in that fighters only fight 2-3 times a year, some even only once. That isnt enough to undo a loss. Federer might be the best tennis player of all time, and his record is like 1080-240 or something like that. A 75% win-loss ration in boxing has people calling that fighter a "gatekeeper" or "journeyman". But tennis players might play 40, 50, or even 60 times a year, so a "bad day" here and there is easily forgiven.

I definitely don't buy this. I'd argue the problem is so few high level competitive fights get put on that fans tend to overvalue pretty records since records are manufactured more in this era then any other era at the most elite levels. So when casual fans almost never see the fights they wanna see & even hardcore fans rarely get the level of competitive fights they wanna see that keeps perpetuating the myth that since so few guys have prime Carl Froch schedules that the guy with the prettiest record if usually the best guy. And everyone wants to watch the best guy thus everyone wants to be the guy promoting & airing that type of guy. So its all a cycle of certain things happening & its more of a self fulfilling prophesy than anything else & it can be easily altered if competition is more highly valued over pretty records by promoters & networks. Fans will appreciate certain things more or less, but the whole core reasons anyone watches anything is for the competition of it all & boxing has damn near quit giving fans that.

And as a US guy who's been watching the decline in popularity of boxing over the last couple decades & the increase in popularity of boxing over a similar time in the UK its beyond obvious. Go look at the 12 biggest shows or 12 random shows by the main promoters in the US & the UK & you'll see drastic differences in the competitiveness of those shows with a clear lean towards the UK shows. I'd expect you'd see less 0's at comparable experience levels of fighters career as well cuz UK guys will have been matched tougher & taken an L at some point as well. And boxing hasn't been as popular as it is today in a long ass time & meanwhile US boxing has never been less popular outside of a guy or two, & I'm not sure there has ever been so many elite level, fringe contenders & prospects with 0's.

The tennis thing or other sports in general to boxing as far as times you can compete in a given year is valid, but mainly its all the more reason that ever time a guy fights he NEEDS to be in a competitive fight. You're wasting everyones time by not doing so. The fighters, the fans, the promoters, the networks, everyones time is being under respected & therefore less people over time tend to keep caring about boxing cuz 1)guys don't fight that much, but 2)even when they do they fight guys in fights they are 80% or better to win & even the name guys don't fight other name guys.

Boxing is just structurally different than most other sports. Tournaments are difficult, because of injuries. 1 small cut and a fighter is out of the tournament. Unless that tournament takes a year or so like the Super 6, and then most people lose interest.

Sure, but the one thing boxing does thats different then any other sport is have a traveling circus way of putting on its events. Every other sport has a clear narrative of some elite level where the sport largely takes place at. There is some sorta farm system officially or unofficially in other sports & more importantly a high point where the best compete at. In boxing the difference between the best fighters in the world & guys boxing as a hobby or part time career aren't separated in anyway.

And personally I've never seen tournaments as the fix for boxing. Injuries & time are problems in boxing as you mention. In team events where one guy tends to have less impact its fine, but any individual sport has less appeal with a tournament format the rougher the sport happens to be & boxing is among the roughest individual sports around if not hands down the roughest. And you'll notice that most tournaments in rough sports tend to happen all in the same day & for a specific example its how the UFC operated in its initial format. The people could get invested in something like that. Its much harder to keep people invested in tournaments that last several months if not over a year. People tend to lose interest & fighters might overcame injuries from their first round fight yet get injuries in training. Boxing isn't really a sport you'd wanna do tournaments in at all due to these factors. You just wanna make the best competitive fight possible each time out.

Its a very difficult problem boxing has. I dont know the solution.

I think the solutions are more evident than some people wanna admit, but I do believing implementing those solutions are problematic & not easily done since boxing is a every man for himself sport where being the guy going against the grain requires risk taking, resolve & a roster of a high caliber or capable of reaching a high caliber that is willing to take risks & show resolve as well.

That being the case flipping the paradigm of boxing from this self fulfilling prophesy that is making boxing smaller & smaller in the US is gonna be difficult & probably doesn't happen til there are more high level failures in boxing, many more yawn inducing matchups no one cares about for the elite fighters &/or til more promoters get their power lifted from them or join together to form a bigger entity perhaps. Neither of which I can envision happening in the next 10 years.

[boxinghead530]

IIRC, legally, they are.

PBC has attempted to deemphasize that role. But apparently, boxing 'fans' want to ensure that the Top Ranks and Golden Boys of the world can continue to get the biggest slice of revenue generated from boxing.

PBC is a promotional company. Wtf do you think they are?

[Eff Pandas]

The duties are a bit different, but many are common. The main differences are that you are taking no financial risk (the lead promoter is), and you are not negotiating the fighter purses or network rights fees (the lead promoter does that as well). In instances like this, the bigger promoter brings on a smaller local promoter to basically handle all the local stuff, and to make use of all their local connections with ticket buyers, vendors, media, commission, etc., and maybe get a few local ticket sellers on the card to help with the live gate. Mainly though its about logistics, and having someone on the ground during the entire promotion, not just when the lead promoter comes in for fight week. For the Lacy-Reid fight, we handled the hotel deal, ground transportation, local media, commission issues, site logistics, and most of the undercard. We handled all that stuff so basically all Gary had to do was to come in with his team for fight week and everything was ready to go.

(on an unrelated note, this is pretty much how Haymon operates, and guys like Dibella are basically co-promoters or site coordinators, depending on how you look at it)

Interesting stuff. And thats the best way of framing what Haymon does that I've heard I think. Haymon sets things up & the promoters handle the random fight bs & logistics.

Since I've really grasped how promoters operated I've always thought this is how boxing should work ideally thats better for boxing overall. Some outside entity (a network, a manager, a fighter, etc) should hire a promoter to promote a event. There doesn't need to be so much long term power given to promoters with signing fighters for years & years. There'd be less boxing, less part time boxers or guys who shouldn't even be fighting on a pro level I'd argue most of the time but it'd be higher caliber boxing or you wouldn't last very long as a promoter.

[Eff Pandas]

PBC is a promotional company. Wtf do you think they are?

They aren't a promotional company like Top Rank & Golden Boy are promotional companies doe. PBC is just like HBO Boxing if there was no HBO & HBO Boxing had to fish around or make deals with other networks to show there fights.

[OnePunch]

I definitely don't buy this. I'd argue the problem is so few high level competitive fights get put on that fans tend to overvalue pretty records since records are manufactured more in this era then any other era at the most elite levels. So when casual fans almost never see the fights they wanna see & even hardcore fans rarely get the level of competitive fights they wanna see that keeps perpetuating the myth that since so few guys have prime Carl Froch schedules that the guy with the prettiest record if usually the best guy. And everyone wants to watch the best guy thus everyone wants to be the guy promoting & airing that type of guy. So its all a cycle of certain things happening & its more of a self fulfilling prophesy than anything else & it can be easily altered if competition is more highly valued over pretty records by promoters & networks. Fans will appreciate certain things more or less, but the whole core reasons anyone watches anything is for the competition of it all & boxing has damn near quit giving fans that.

well one of the main reasons you get these "inflated" records is that the promoter needs time to recoup his investment, and doesnt want to put his guy in with Godzilla in his first TV fight. It is in his financial interests to match his guy against a few dummies, or a few older fighters on the downside, in order to build his kid into an attraction.

Find a different way to fund those first 20 fights of a guys career, and promoters can go back to promoting events and selling tickets, and leave the "career management" stuff to the managers.

[Eff Pandas]

well one of the main reasons you get these "inflated" records is that the promoter needs time to recoup his investment, and doesnt want to put his guy in with Godzilla in his first TV fight. It is in his financial interests to match his guy against a few dummies, or a few older fighters on the downside, in order to build his kid into an attraction.

Find a different way to fund those first 20 fights of a guys career, and promoters can go back to promoting events and selling tickets, and leave the "career management" stuff to the managers.

Couldn't one gain the rep of putting on competitive fights that garners an audience on that merit & be profitable as an enterprise at that starting point. You'd take the same early L money-wise as you attempted to gain that rep, but it sounds like promoters are doing that already with the 20 fight guys you talk about. And you'd gain a longer lasting popularity as a promotion than any one fighter could give you cuz that guys "life" in the sport is shorter & less consistent than that of a promoter.

And isn't that what the TR's & GBP's have already done to some lesser degree than I'd like to see happening all around boxing? Cuz when you say Top Rank it stands for a certain quality of product regardless of any particular fighter on any particular TR card that would be of greater value than a Pretty Girl Promotions card (a local promoter in my area who's a club show-y type promotion) would to anyone who knows anything about boxing.

I suppose the problem from there is promoters are in constant competition with each other to grab the biggest amateur names & potential future stars so that makes them pay more to grab those guys & therefor they need to make money off of those guys & in turn that makes it harder to make a profit in boxing cuz everyone is down for themselves & no one is out for boxing.

Boxing the sport has suffered greatly due to all the money guys can make via boxing the business. When more cats put the sport, the competition & the fans before money the sport will be better off & ironically the guys running sh^t when the happens will be making more money then anyones making right now.

/rant, got kinda ranty there my bad.

[Sweet Jones]

well one of the main reasons you get these "inflated" records is that the promoter needs time to recoup his investment, and doesnt want to put his guy in with Godzilla in his first TV fight. It is in his financial interests to match his guy against a few dummies, or a few older fighters on the downside, in order to build his kid into an attraction.

Find a different way to fund those first 20 fights of a guys career, and promoters can go back to promoting events and selling tickets, and leave the "career management" stuff to the managers.

DISCLAMER: The following is not meant to be disrespectful or insulting. Just one mans opinion.

OnePunch,

There are probably less than a handful of people registered on this forum who can speak with first hand knowledge on some of the business aspects of this sport as you've done in this thread.

In my humble opinion, this board would be better off if you did in fact spend more time sharing such knowledge and your experiences.

Respectfully, your apparent insistence on being 'snarky' about all things Haymon/PBC-related takes away from where you (and again, IMHO) could be TRULY contributing to making this board a better and more informed place.

Again, no disrespect and take of it what you will. Just something to consider.

[ShoulderRoll]

Not necessarily. Schaffer seems smart enough to know what fights go on PPV and what fights don't. He would NEVER have put a Crawford/Postol fight on PPV for example (of course I believe Bob did that to keep Crawford's value down).

I don't know if you need to sign exclusive deals. Just make sure you bid the most on the best fights.

I've always felt that the premium cable channels could help boxing most by only paying for top quality matchups. And by forcing promoters to cooperate with each other to give us those matchups.

As you say to make this work they need to be able to separate which fights belong on PPV and which don't.

But look how much of a stink Bob Arum put up just because HBO was trying to play matchmaker.

[Deevel916]

Boxing needs to adopt the UFC strategy. All fighters under one umbrella and organization. Each weight class undergo a tournament until there's one true champ per weight class. If you don't want to fight you go to the back of the line.

[OnePunch]

DISCLAMER: The following is not meant to be disrespectful or insulting. Just one mans opinion.

OnePunch,

There are probably less than a handful of people registered on this forum who can speak with first hand knowledge on some of the business aspects of this sport as you've done in this thread.

In my humble opinion, this board would be better off if you did in fact spend more time sharing such knowledge and your experiences.

Respectfully, your apparent insistence on being 'snarky' about all things Haymon/PBC-related takes away from where you (and again, IMHO) could be TRULY contributing to making this board a better and more informed place.

Again, no disrespect and take of it what you will. Just something to consider.

No disrespect taken.

I am "snarky" about what Haymon is doing because I genuinely believe what he is doing will do lasting damage to a sport that I love. He has devalued boxing content to the point that almost every network has zero interest in actually purchasing content. He killed FNF, yet put nothing in its place. He skirts the Ali Act which was supposed to really delineate the promoter / manager roles. And he overpaid fighters with borrowed money to the point that meaningful fights are next to impossible to get made, due to the finances. So yes, I'm quite critical of him. Haymon is great for the 20 or 30 fighters who are making ****** money. For everyone else, ehhhh, not so much.

Yes, "boxing" as a whole is indeed "sick", and needs help. But Haymon is a situation of the cure being worse than the disease.