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have copious free-TV access – football, basketball, baseball and hockey the most prominent among them. Those sports have their own dedicated channels on DirecTV and other satellite services, and 24/7/365 coverage is also provided by ESPN, Fox Sports and other networks frequented by casual sports fans. Boxing has none of those things, and one reason is that there is a lack of cooperation between all the power brokers. Boxing is infected by a focus on “chasing the next dollar” instead of “let’s work together and grow the sport.” Premier Boxing Champions tried to resurrect the sport in 2015 by putting shows on NBC and CBS, but because PBC was not able to attract sufficient independent advertisers, those shows ended up being infomercials and the networks eventually said “no more.” As Ron Borges said on a recent podcast that I co-host with James “Smitty” Smith, the main job of a commissioner of a given sport is to grow the sport and leave it better than how he found it when he took office. Boxing has no such person and no such structure – it is the ultimate “Wild West” sport that is run by four different sanctioning bodies with four separate sets of rankings, a circumstance that makes it almost impossible for a fighter to remain undisputed champion should he or she be lucky enough to even become an undisputed champion. Turki Alalshikh is attempting to become that power broker, but even if he succeeds in gathering all the networks and promoters into one place, how long will he remain in the sport? If he goes away – and if those huge purses go away – what then? The best sports are the ones that are easy to understand, and, frankly, boxing is the simplest sport in that regard: two athletes inside a boxing ring exchanging punches in order to determine who is the best on that given night. Many of us are drawn to boxing because it is a very relatable sport. When there’s a fight on the street, we
turn and watch. Every Tom, Dick and Harry who has a personal beef and who wants to make money in settling that beef turns to boxing as its vehicle, because they know that it will draw an audience. Look at what’s happening with John Rocker and Patrick Mahomes’ father. Look at the growth of bare-knuckle boxing. Look at the expansion of celebrity boxing and YouTuber boxing and other iterations. They all are filling the gap left by “Big- Time Boxing” in the U.S. While boxing in and of itself is a simple sport that is very marketable, those who are in charge of marketing it to the mainstream have done a horrible job in this country. They have made this simple sport impossibly complicated – and expensive – to follow. We fans who remain must pay for every fight card we see, and that automatically cuts down the potential universe of fans. What if the NFL charged $9.99 for every game and $200 to watch the Super Bowl? What if MLB charged $5.99 per game and required a package deal to watch all the World Series games that year? The same for the NBA and the NBA finals. The audience would shrink precipitously, and rightly so. But they’re smart enough to not do this. For boxing, this cutting-down process has lasted generations, and because of that, it was inevitable that this downward spiral would eventually reach its lowest ebb. The withdrawal of ESPN may be that ebb, for as of August, the remaining boxing fans will have to subscribe exclusively to streaming services that not only will charge monthly for basic access, but are charging extra on top of that to see the biggest marquee shows. The void created by “Big-Time Boxing” has created the vacuum in which Jake Paul has prospered. Say what you will about “The Problem Child,” but he knows how to market himself, and he seized upon the environment that was before him. His “event” with Mike Tyson drew the kind of mainstream attention that should be reserved for the best pound-
for-pound fighters in the world, but because boxing is the way it is, names like Terence Crawford, Oleksandr Usyk, Artur Beterbiev, Dmitry Bivol and Naoya Inoue might as well be Joe Schmo to the casual fan. That’s a shame, because all five surely will be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame sometime in the next decade or so. As for Paul-Tyson, the audience was so large that Netflix’s servers couldn’t handle the load caused by so many attempting to see it. Buffering issues ensued, and complaints were lodged. The success of Paul-Tyson in drawing a huge audience proves boxing itself is still a viable attraction. It’s too bad that “real” boxing is unwilling to do the work necessary to do the same, especially in the U.S. So here we are. This is a sport that I’ve loved for more than half a century. That love has been so strong that it became my identity for those who know me. I want it to thrive. I want it to succeed. I want it to be the great sport that inspired me as a child to learn everything I could about it and its history. It has become my life’s work. I am proud of what I’ve achieved so far. But in my native land, boxing has become a niche sport. HBO ended its association in 2018. Showtime cut the cord in 2023. And now ESPN, the last link to U.S. linear TV, will fall by the wayside. Yes, I will continue to watch. Yes, I will continue subscribing to the services that show boxing. Yes, I recognize that boxing in other nations is thriving because they do a lot of the right things to promote the sport. I am thankful for that. Boxing as a whole is not dead, but in the U.S. it took a big step toward its possible demise. Although I am an eternal optimist, I am also a realist, and the reality is that boxing’s prospects in the U.S. are grim.
Top Rank’s exit from ESPN is another blow for U.S. boxing.
missed opportunities to foster potential mainstream stars, etc.). We have all heard the phrase “death by a thousand cuts.” For boxing, I believe today’s situation in the U.S. can be boiled down to this phrase: “death by a thousand decisions.” Willful decisions that have resulted in boxing’s audience contracting instead of expanding. Willful decisions infected by short-term thinking and profit motive rather than driven by a
Another One Bites The Dust By Lee Groves
desire to fix problems and right the ship. “I’ll get mine now, and to heck with the other guy.” The infrastructure that had reliably churned out stars has been gutted. The American amateur boxing system is in tatters; TV and media exposure of pre- Olympic dual meets that introduced potential Olympians to the general public no longer exist. The process by which Olympic teams are selected has become extremely complicated and impossible to follow. Although the Olympic Games are shown globally, the boxing competition is not on marquee platforms in the U.S. In fact, there are doubts as to whether boxing will even continue to be an Olympic sport, and that’s because of the corruption that has infected the sport for decades. It didn’t begin with Roy Jones Jr. vs. Park Si Hun in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but the stench of that decision moved NBC to remove boxing from prime time and onto the “Red Channel” on the 1992 NBC “Triple-Cast,” then to 3 a.m. on CNBC in future games. Because of this “out of sight, out of mind” reality, kids who might have been persuaded to give boxing a try are instead drawn to sports that still
A Federal Express driver just stopped by the house to drop off a package for me. It contained the latest issue of Ring Magazine, which I receive as a contributing freelancer. When I told the driver, who was close to my age of 60, that I wrote for the magazine, he said, with a touch of wistfulness, “Oh yes, I remember watching the fights with my dad on ABC, NBC and CBS. Boy, boxing used to be big, but I don’t see it anymore.” This is something I hear often from people in my age group who remember what it was like when boxing was a sport of high prominence. Unfortunately, boxing in the U.S. took another depressing step toward its eventual extinction as a viable sport. In February, it was announced that
Top Rank might no longer have its fights aired on ESPN, meaning that as of August, “the sweet science” will no longer be available on linear television in the U.S. It was probably the worst- kept secret in the industry, but the news still struck with the impact of a Joe Frazier hook. Yes, boxing is thriving globally; I see the enthusiastic crowds in the U.K., and it is doing well in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central and South America, Australia and in the Pacific Rim. But in the U.S., boxing has fallen off the cliff, and I believe it is the result of a decades-long erosion not prompted by unpopularity or bad ratings, but by decisions made by network executives and other power brokers, the changing of the market in terms of purse demands and the sport’s unique ability to engage in self-immolation (bad decisions, bad behavior, bad marketing,
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