How Do You Box?

One of our old trainers who used to teach classes at the club would often finish the warm-up
with everyone, then come over to the front desk and ask me quietly, "How do you box?" It was of course a joke, as he was seconds away from teaching a boxing class and thus, I would often chuckle. At first. But he did it a lot and it became less funny over time. But he stuck with it and then, after a while, it became funny again because he just kept doing it.

Anyway, another part of the joke is that one can't just sum up how to box in just a few words. It's an extremely open-ended question. You could spend a lifetime learning it and still continue to learn new things about it. Anytime someone thinks they've got it all down, they look deeper and realize just how much more there really is. One of many great things about the sport, really.

That being said, when teaching boxing or even being taught yourself, having quick, simple, technical cues are so important. Just short sentences to put in your brain and remember while boxing. Learning proper boxing technique is hard enough but maintaining that technique while tired is a whole other challenge. Here are some general, non-punch-specific cues I like to use when doing a boxing workout on the heavy bag or with someone on mitts. It is certainly not a complete list and is not necessarily in a specific order but all important, basic things to always remind yourself of, no matter how good you at get. Intermittently throughout your workout session, perform a "systems check"  and run through these! 

• Remain in your fighting stance at all times - non-dominant foot forward, dominant foot back.

• Keep your hands up but shoulders relaxed.

• Hands start from the face and return to the face as quickly and directly as possible on every punch.

• Stay on the balls of your feet.

• Keep a slight bend in those knees at all times, let your weight sit down low in the hips.

• You want some distance between your feet. Not so wide that you can’t move but never too close together.

• Chin tucked into your chest, with a slight pelvic tip forward.

• Give a short, forced exhale on each punch. Don't hold your breath!

• Combination punches generally flow together, with no pauses naturally in between, i.e. if you throw a jab-cross, rotate your cross hand shoulder forward as your pulling your jab hand back.

• Try to keep your head moving - at least a little bit - before and after combos.

• Relax those shoulders. Seems counterintuitive to throwing powerful punches but you will punch faster and harder with relaxed shoulders, at least up until the point of impact.

• Straight wrists, tight fists when you hit that target.

• Relax the fist when not punching.

• Hit with the front and middle knuckles on your hand.

• Shoulders replace the hands when throwing any punch to the head.

• Bring those hands back to the chin just as fast as you throw them out there for a punch. Imagine you are taking a cookie from a cobra's mouth and don't want to get bitten!

• Don't push your punches, snap them!

• Rotate shoulders and hips on every punch.

• Start punches from the ground up - begins in the feet, works through the leg, the hips, the shoulders and THEN the hand.

• Check your distance from the target  and use footwork to get into the proper position.

• If you get tired, still stay active. You don’t have to throw the combo again but keep your hands up and keep moving. Your opponent doesn’t have to know if you are tired!

• Start slow to learn a combo, then speed it up, then add some power.

• Don’t lean your torso in to punches. Head should never be over feet. If you find yourself needing to lean in, get closer and/or rotate more.

• Every time you throw a punch, you are shifting weight from one foot to another. About 60%, give or take. Again though, that does not mean your torso/head should be leaning out.

• Always keep your eyes facing the target. You can rotate everything else but keep your head looking straight.

• Non-punching hand should always be covering the face

• Imagine your opponent is as tall as you. Don’t punch upwards as if fighting a very tall person or downwards either. For body shots, it is your body/ribs/belly/liver/spleen you should be targeting, in terms of height.

• Drop the weight down a little bit on power punches or at least, don’t stand up taller to punch the bag. Want maximum balance.

• All punches should hurt or at least bother your opponent. If your punches don't hurt, you must exert!

• Don't just stand in front of something and punch. Land your combo, then move to a new spot/angle, before throwing again.

• When punching while stepping, your foot should land at the same time as the punch. Sync up the hands and feet.

Whether you are shadow-boxing, hitting a heavy bag, working mitts, sparring, or even in the ring fighting someone, don't forget to perform these system checks routinely. Doesn't mean you can run through everything all at once but taking a moment to move out of striking range and check in with what your hands, feet and head are doing, will make a HUGE difference. As we get tired and in the heat of battle, it is very easy to lose track of these things, even for experienced boxers.

So, though our old trainer was joking when he asked, "How do I box?" it is a question we always have to ask and re-ask ourselves all the time. And just like non-sweet sciences, nothing is ever quite 100% settled either. There are certainly standards like the many I have mentioned but it is always good to re-evaluate them and see if they still and always hold true.

 

 

 

Great Fights You Should Watch on YouTube!

This week in our club, we honored a very classic fight known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many to be the pound-for-pound best ever fought Jake Lamotta in 1951. It was indeed a massacre but also a movie-like display of toughness and resiliency. For me though, what makes a truly great fight is something that goes back and forth between two motivated combatants who display excellent skill and strategy. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was an iconic fight for sure but not necessarily a great one, in my opinion.

Iconic means that the fight was important to boxing, with a huge buildup, memorable and significant in some way beyond the contest itself. Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling II was one of the biggest fights of all time, taking place during the rise of Nazi Germany in 1938 and meant a whole lot more than just a heavyweight championship to the entire world. But the fight was over in the first round, with Louis knocking out Schmeling. Not necessarily an exciting contest. Maybe the most well-known, famous fight of all tie was the Rumble in the Jungle - Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman. The story behind this fight and the two men, as well as what took place in the ring that night, is truly the stuff of legend but to watch the actual fight itself is not particularly exciting to me. While Foreman was one of the greatest and Ali is known as THE greatest, neither displayed great boxing skill in that fight. Ali used a very ill-advised strategy and Big George let him get a way with it by throwing looping, sloppier punches. Maybe that's a little blasphemous but if you are looking to check out some of what I feel are more interesting, exciting and compelling battles, here are some recommendations below.

I've divided them up into "classic" and "modern" categories. “Classic” being anything past 20 years old and “modern” being something more recent, with boxers who still compete. I've included video links too. You can skip ahead to the first round if you don't want to see the walk-in and everything else. And now that football season is over, what if you took about an hour every Sunday to watch a boxing match instead?

Classics

Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier I

Called the Fight of the Century, Ali-Frazier 1 had a great build-up between the two prominent heavyweights in the golden era for that division, with both fighters generally seeming to dislike each other, Their third fight between them - The Thrilla in Manilla - is an honorable mention and almost like a real life Rocky movie but both men were at a higher level when they met the first time. Plus, for those of you who doubt the importance and power of the lead hook, look no further than this fight and watch Joe Frazier use it to single-handedly (literally) take down The Greatest.

Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Tommy Hearns I

Another two all-time greats going at it in a battle that went back in forth, with adjustments and strategy changes. I consider myself very lucky to have grown up during the best era for middleweights ever, who all fought each other. Any of the classic battles between Sugar Ray, Hearns, Hagler or Duran and fun watches but this one is the second best.

Marvin Hagler vs. Tommy Hearns

And here is the best of those matchups! If you watch nothing else I mention here, watch this fight. It's only a few rounds, it won't take long,  but has more action than you will see in multiple 12-round fights. It's one thing to watch an all-out brawl but watching it with two of the best ever is something special. Even if you don't like boxing or appreciate the skills, you would probably enjoy this one.

Riddick Bowe vs Evander Holyfield I

When Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas just over 33 years ago to the day, I mostly stopped following boxing for a while. I also ran away from home, didn't have a TV, and there was no such thing as the internet so it was fully off my radar. Another one of my favorite boxers, Hector Camacho fought against Julio Cesar Chavez a couple years later and I watched it with some people from work and Camacho lost a decision and was generally dominated and it just made me angry so I'm like, "Screw this!" and didn't want to watch boxing at all. But then a couple months later, I was housesitting for someone with HBO and watched the Bowe-Holyfield fight just to kill some time. It actually got me re-interested in sport. Great fight, great heavyweights and it ushered in a decent mini-era for that division. All three fights these guys had were good but the first was definitely the best, in my opinion.

Mickey Ward vs. Arturo Gatti I

All three of the Ward-Gatti fights were classics but this is easily my favorite. Both guys fight similarly in a style I really like. Great boxing, went back and forth, and so much heart from both fighters.

(Honorable Mention) Diego Corrales vs. Jose Luis Castillo

Another all-out slugfest with the fighters trading shots for 9 rounds but it was the 10th round where it became a classic. I thought it was over two times (and might have been stopped earlier, had it taken place today).

Modern

Juan Manuel Marquez vs Manny Pacquiao IV

We had all been begging for the Pac Man vs. Mayweather fight for years and even though I had resigned myself to believing that it was never going to happen, I can't say I was super excited to see Pacquiao fight Marquez for the fourth time. All their fights had been close (first was a draw) but I thought it would be another hard-fought, relatively close decision for Manny. This battle took a few rounds to heat up but once it did, we saw some excellent hand speed and probably the best counter-punch knockout of all time.

Anthony Joshua vs Wladimir Klitschkoho

The heavyweight division reached it's lowest point at the end of the 1990s, at least in terms of captivating the public's interest. It was largely dominated by the Klitschko brothers, Vitali and Wladimir. Both very talented and seemingly good guys but just did not move the needle. Without a lot of strong competitors, the landscape was pretty barren. It took about 15 years for the division to get more interesting. Anthony Joshua put on a pretty good performance against Wladimer in 2017 and threw one of the best uppercuts you'll see in the 11th round, coming back from some major damage and exhaustion earlier. I won't say watching all 11 rounds is that exciting. There are a lot of less interesting moments for sure but the highlights are at least worth checking out.

Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder III

This was another fight I didn't necessarily want to see. And again, Fury-Wilder 1 and 2 weren't bad fights, it was just that Tyson Fury is a much more skilled boxer than Wilder and of all the combined rounds they had fought in their previous two fights, I thought Fury won pretty much all but one of them and like most people, wanted to see Fury and Anthony Joshua go at it instead but a third match with Wilder was contractually obligated. Luckily though, their third fight wasn't what I expected at all and was one of the most exciting battles I had seen in a while. Lots of action, both fighters looked finished at multiple times, and were going for broke. Tyson Fury could have easily out-boxed Deontay again but decided to slug it out.

Jermell Charlo vs. Tony Harrison II

Great technical boxing from both fighters. I really like Tony Harrison's sharp jab and after I saw this fight, I decided I wanted to jab like him. Then I decided I wanted more of a Macho Camacho hammer-style jab. One day I hope to somehow fuse the two despite them having different applications.

Naoya Inoue vs. Nonito Donaire I

Nonito "The Filipino Flash" is/was a future Hall-of-Famer who had experienced a resurgence in the last few years. Inoue was a hungry, young fighter who had just been running right through everybody, finishing all of his fights early. As impressive as it is to just destroy the competition, it's even more impressive when you aren't able to just crush someone the way you're used to, end up getting hurt, taken into deeper waters for the first time, and manage to come back by taking things to the next level and showing the heart of the champion. Doing this on a couple of different occasions is even more impressive still.

Do You Have a Chip on Your Shoulder?

Once again, I am gonna reference the Big Game coming up this Sunday, Super Bowl LVII, Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles. In modern day American football, the success or failure of a team is largely dependent on how well their quarterback plays. It is by far, by far, the most important position of any sport ever. Doesn't mean the other players don't matter- it takes a village- but without good, consistent quarterback play, your team does not have a shot.

The Chiefs are led by quarterback Patrick Mahomes. I think it is pretty safe to say that he is the best QB in the league right now and if he wins on Sunday, it will pretty much cement that legacy. But when he came out of college, there were plenty of legitimate questions as to whether or not he could actually play in the pros. He played for Texas Tech University, a member of a Power 5 conference but by no means a college football powerhouse. As a starter, his win-loss record was 13-19, with his best season coming his last year where they went 7-5. That is barely bowl-eligible. Everyone knew he had phenomenal physical talent but he also played in a very college-style system. Record-setting quarterbacks coming out of Texas Tech the last 20 years are not that uncommon but to date, none of them have had any significant career in the NFL. So there were doubters when he came out of college. The Chiefs picked him in the first round of the draft but nobody was picking him to be an instant star.

The Eagles QB is Jalen Hurts. He started off in a much more prominent college football team, Alabama. But he didn't showcase a lot of arm talent there and despite the team's successes, he lost his starting job to a true freshman and transferred to another school, Oklahoma, where he put up better numbers but it was again, in a very collegiate system that hasn't transferred well to the pros. He also lacked some of the physical traits that NFL teams look for in their quarterback. He's not particularly tall and while athletic, did not show anywhere near the kind of arm talent that someone like Patrick Mahomes had. It was a big surprise to most when the Eagles picked him in the 2nd round and most of the experts did not think he had a solid chance to be a good pro.

Then of course there is Tom Brady. Not playing in this Super Bowl but has played in more and won more than anybody else. The undisputed greatest of all time. His story was much more unlikely. Drafted in the 6th round with no expectations to be even be a backup. Our home team QB, Josh Allen, displayed some amazing arm talent in college but was a California kid and not a single team in his state (of which there are many) wanted him. He had to go to Wyoming, our least populous state with pretty much zero presence in the college football universe. In the pros, his favorite target has become wide receiver Stefan Diggs, who was drafted unnoticed in the 5th round and never expected to be a starter on any team. 

I could go on and on here. You take a look at the All-Pro list in the NFL and just about every player on it was doubted in some way. That is where I am going with this. The greatest football players, by and large, came in with a chip on their shoulders. They wanted to prove their doubters wrong. Instead of being dissuaded or losing faith, they persevered and became greater than anyone could have imagined. All the people who doubted Tom Brady were not wrong. He overcame those doubts with hard work and belief and sheer will.

While 99.999999% of us have no shot in the NFL, these are good lessons to apply to our daily lives. We face, and will continue to face, adversity, struggle, and people have doubted us too on some levels. The key is to turn that all into our own personal successes, no matter how small. Let all of those doubts, all of that adversity fuel us to work harder, to do better, to overcome anything.

We should also let those stories inspire us. I've seen this work firsthand in a boxing class. I've come to a class before and just for whatever reason, didn't have it. Something was off. I wasn't moving well, punching well and getting too tired. What's worse is that I knew it and the very thoughts themselves were taking me into a downward spiral. Then I remembered watching Michael Jordan (who didn't make his varsity high school basketball team) and remembered some regular season games when he was off. None of his shots were going down, he wasn't able to drive the ball to the basket, whatever; and I remembered what he did. He grinded it out. Took it to the hoop, got fouled, and made free throw shots. He found a way to get it done even when he was off. Obviously, I am no Michael Jordan but in my little instance of feeling off during a boxing class, I could apply the same thing. Just grind through it. Find something to work on. And it worked! 

So if you watch the big game tomorrow, know that almost all the players and coaches all got there because somebody doubted them. Someone thought they couldn't do it. But they worked hard and did! We can all this too. We've also been doubted. We've doubted ourselves. Whether we're going to a boxing class or playing in the Super Bowl, this is our chance to show what we're made of. To prove the doubters wrong. To persevere even when we're tired, not feeling it, whatever. Take some of those chips you might be eating as a snack during the game and put them on your shoulder!

What Is Wrong With Professional Boxing?

In about a week, the two best teams in football this year - the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia
Eagles - will go at it in the Super Bowl. It is the ultimate spectacle and will be watched by many millions, all over the world- many of them not even football fans. It has become pretty much a national holiday here. And of course, just about every sport has a similar playoff and championship structure.

Boxing is an exception though. There are championship belts, 4 of them, and fighters at each weight class do compete for them but the system is nothing like we see in other sports and that is one reason that professional boxing will never be as popular with mainstream audiences the way football or just about any other major sport is here in the USA. Here are several more reasons:

Fighting is a Hard Life

Though I am highly critical of the way professional boxing is managed, there are some issues that stand in the way of its popularity that cannot be fixed or changed. While football teams can play about every week, basketball about every other day, soccer same thing, baseball even every day, boxers need a lot more time in between, particularly at the higher level where they fight more rounds. It's just not safe to put your body through the process on a regular basis. The same could be said about football but players at least get an offseason and are not involved in every single play. So the problem here, is that it doesn't allow fans to get immersed into a season and follow a player/team. Some boxers will fight a few times a year, some maybe only once.

I guess there is a way to change this but it would really change the types of fights we saw. Going to an Olympic style with 3-round bouts, accentuating the point system, and having boxers compete every week for a set period of time. The problem is that 3-round fights are pretty short and not something I could see the public tuning in for a must-see type of event.

Before a boxer can get to any kind of high level, there is a very long, hard journey ahead. Many of the greats started off when they were little kids, trained for a long time, had a successful amateur career for no money, then a pro career for not much more money until they started to develop a name for themselves. Some prospects, particularly those who are Olympic champions, can command a higher salary from the get-go but even then, it's not going to be like getting your first contract in many other pro sports. And going the Olympic route isn't easy at all. So if you're a fantastic athlete, you are probably going to lean towards other sports with a lower floor, higher ceiling, and don't involve getting punched hard by someone trained to do so.

Fights are Made (Or Not Made)

This is probably the biggest issue right here. In other sports, a governing body sets the schedule. For playoffs and tournaments, competitors are matched up together culminating in a championship. Boxing has several governing bodies, to some degree, but they cannot really set up high-level fights. This gets decided between the promotors and fighters themselves. They have to agree to terms. This negotiation process becomes a lot more difficult where one boxer needs a fight a lot more than the other. One fight everybody has been waiting for for years is Errol Spence and Terence Crawford. Both are champions, the potential match-up has been discussed and even promoted but terms have never been agreed to. It is also possible they may not want to fight each other. Why take the chance of getting a loss when you can continue to stay undefeated and still make money? Plus what if one side wants more money in general? Then the other side is going to want more too. How does that get resolved? Sometimes fighters will even have to give up some of their purse to get the fight but that's only if they really, really need it and the best fighters rarely do. Even the venue itself is part of the negotiation process and just another potential complication.

Along those lines, fights are often teased, even announced, but never happen. Or in the case of Mayweather and Pacquiao, happen years down the road and are less eventful than they would have been when everyone was screaming for it. If I read one more thing about Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia that doesn't include a confirmed date, time and place, I am going to smash my phone. And to add insult to injury, when the whole world has wanted to see something like Errol Spence and Terence Crawford fight, talks and dates get thrown around, both sides jaw at each other, the matchup is teased some more and then we find out Crawford is going to fight someone else we don't care about. Spence and Thurman just got announced. 

This is extremely frustrating to any hardcore fan and will not bring in new fans at all. Imagine if we got to listen to the Chiefs and Eagles talk about each other all season, win all of their games leading up to the Super Bowl, and then it just never gets played?  Or hey guys, instead of the Chiefs and Eagles, we were going to have Indianapolis Colts play the Eagles instead? Is that cool? I know it's the not game you wanted but Indy is really fired up for it! And who knows, could be a good game, right? This scenario cannot ever be successful. Boxing used to be a lot more popular than it is now and one of the reasons is that superstars fought each other. There still had to be terms agreed to but it was a lot easier to get done.

Of course some of the governing bodies try to take some control of this but there is only so much they can do. If someone wins their belt, they can contractually require them to defend that belt within X-amount of time, against the highest-ranking challenger. But fighters and their teams can get out of this too. Payoffs or just vacating their belts are an option. Which kind of rolls into our next issue.

So Many Weight Classes, So Many Belts

Quick, who won the Super Bowl last year? The LA Rams. Who won the NBA championship? Golden State Warriors. Who was the best boxer? No one can answer that question easily because as I mentioned before, there are 4 major governing bodies (think of them like leagues) and 17 weight classes. That means there could be 68 champions at any given time. 68!!! Now it is certainly true that many champs have multiple belts in their weight class, sometimes even belts in different weight classes, so there are not currently 68 champs but it is certainly possible. There is this notion of a "pound-for-pound" list and rankings every year, including a Ring Magazine champion but it is not anywhere near as cut and dry. It's all just based on opinion and can never be decided in the ring.

The weight classes are another one of those things that can't/shouldn't really be changed completely because it makes such a huge difference and fighter safety is highly dependent on it but we probably don't need 17. The UFC, by contrast, has far less and it's a little easier to keep track of who the champions are. And unlike boxing, the UFC is one league that controls their matchups pretty completely. There are other leagues, like Bellator and One and smaller ones but the UFC is really the main one, where the most talent consistently lives.

Generally with boxing, they say that if the heavyweight division is relevant, boxing is relevant. The casual fan is not going to be as interested in the smaller weight classes. This has proven out to be true, looking back over the years when the sport spiked in popularity. It is something that has been lacking for a while too, which doesn't help.

Pay-per-View

Some of the networks, mainly ESPN and Showtime now,  as well as streaming services like ESPN+ and DAZN will show fights on TV but the vast majority of big fights must be ordered separately through pay-per-view. It's gotten pretty expensive too. There is a niche audience of hardcore fans who will pay for it consistently but casual fans will not, save for those rare events that trickle into pop culture. Every boxing promotion is well aware of this and has no real motivation to change. That niche audience is just big enough to make it worthwhile and just passionate enough to pay a big price so it isn't worth taking the financial risk of putting everything on TV like the other major sports. And it becomes one of those chicken-and-the-egg things. The NFL can put their fights on for "free" but make tons of money because advertisers are going to pay through the roof for commercials, since the sport is so popular. They won't pay that money to air their ads during boxing because it doesn't command that big of an audience. But it never will because of the pay-per-view wall. Boxing promotions would have to lose money with the hope of making more money down the road and it just isn't worth it to them.

Promotion In General

For similar reasons, fights and fighters are not promoted the way they used to be. Sugar Ray Leonard would be in commercials, the cover of magazines, on the Johnny Carson show, etc. Mike Tyson had his own video game (and it was awesome). Even networks would have their boxing events during the weekends, during the day, and they would promote them. While watching football on CBS, I'd see a commercial for their boxing event next week with Hector "Macho" Camacho. I had no idea who this dude was but he sounded like a guy I would want to watch fight another guy. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini too. I was intrigued so I watched and ended up loving them both. Now of course those were great fighters and a better time for boxing but if I were a kid and saw a commercial for a similar afternoon program with Naoya, "The Monster" Innoue, I would be totally interested in checking out this Monster. But we don't have regular boxing on TV like that anymore. Even if it's just re-runs from recent fights, people might tune in and get more interested in the product if we went back to this. Just about every televised boxing broadcast starts late at night (with some exceptions due to time differences) and the main event doesn't even go on until after midnight EST. If the rest of the card is not interesting, plenty of casual watchers will have lost interest and/or fallen asleep by then.

Boxing is not really advertised in general anymore either, except through social media. And the ads aren't very compelling or interesting to the uninitiated. All the chatter about boxing is restricted to people already within the social bubble of the sport and if you are outside of that bubble or don't follow certain things on Instagram, it is likely you won't be exposed to it. Even fight posters aren't as common as they used to be. The very first big fight I remember being promoted was Larry Holmes vs. Jerry Cooney. I was about 7 years old and wasn't exactly tied into pop culture but I still couldn't escape it. I saw billboards, posters, heard about it on the radio and even heard people talking about it. That could never happen now. I knew nothing about boxing at the time but I knew when that fight was going on and that it was a big deal. Nowadays, even when I follow boxing closely, I still have Google fights to see what's happening this month. I suppose it could be that chicken-or-the-egg thing again where boxing isn't promoted the same way because public interest isn't there but we have seen the interesting example of Jake and Logan Paul recently, who were able to make a name for themselves outside of boxing circles and generate more interest for their fights than experienced fighters,

Speaking of those Paul brothers, I do want to say they will NOT appear on this list as what is wrong with professional boxing. Quite the opposite really. As I said in the paragraph above, they have been able to accomplish what boxing either can't accomplish or won't try to accomplish. They have crossed over into the mainstream. They have angered a lot of those hardcore boxing fans for sure by doing this but instead of hating, I think there is much to be learned from how they have handled their career.

Commentary

This may seem like a small thing but it's bigger than it seems. American football is a very complex game to learn. It should be a major roadblock for the average layperson but many of them are able to learn and fans in general have become very educated on the game. Much of this comes from the commentary you hear during football telecasts. People like John Madden taught us the game as we watched. Through the help of producers, people like Cris Collinsworth and Tony Romo are able to explain everything that is happening, as well as the nuances behind them. Whether you have seen a million football games or are watching your first, all of the announcers and production crew are going to bring you into the game.

No matter what you think about Joe Rogan personally, I think it could be argued that he is the best sports color commentator ever for his work with the UFC. While not as complex as football, mixed martial arts was something brand new back when he started. None of us necessarily grew up doing it or certainly were watching it on TV. It didn't exist. Sure we had martial arts and boxing and wrestling but the merging and fast evolution of MMA is something totally different. It could not and would not be where it was if not for Joe Rogan. Once again, he taught us the sport and brought us into it. Besides his knowledge, it was his passion for MMA and passion for talking about MMA that made us want to care too. Then of course there are a plethora of famous voices in baseball and basketball too.

Boxing has never had anyone like this, in my opinion. At least, not in my lifetime, with the exception of Teddy Atlas (who should still be doing it). Many of the commentators are smart, experienced, and certainly nice enough but they seem to have a little to no interest in teaching me the sport. Again, it feels like they understand that they have their niche fans who tune in and talk only to them, with no desire to try and bring in a newbie. Not a ton of passion there either. So someone checking out a fight for the first time won't have very much explained to them nor to the commentators themselves seem particularly excited.

One thing that would certainly help is for the judges scorecards to be made public at the end of every round. Even a boxing superfan may have trouble figuring out who won each round and while judges can and certainly do get it wrong, at least we would know where things stand. Then the commentators would talk about why that person might have won the round, explaining the scoring system so the new and casual fans will at least know who is technically winning. Boxing also is a very fast-moving sport and it is critical that what's going on is clearly called out to us.

Then finally, boxing productions and broadcasts are often poorly put together. Even at a high level. There is often too much time between fights and nothing going on for far too long. I understand that the sport itself provides some limitations here. A fight could last 5 seconds or about 50 minutes. This makes scheduling and preparation difficult and no one wants to do anything to mess with the main event but the UFC does a much better job of managing all this. The problem gets exacerbated in boxing because of the issue with quality commentating. Besides the team talking about the action in the ring, there is the initial front desk group too (don't know what they are actually called) and again, they don't do a lot to really bring me in. So a fight will happen, the ring team will talk for a while, we'll cut out to the front desk people, they will talk a little, we'll see a video montage of the main event fighter, each one looking almost exactly the same, and then rinse and repeat. I love boxing. A lot. But I get really bored during the downtime.

What Can Be Done About This?

I've talked about a few things already - fewer belts, regularly scheduled non-PPV broadcasts, more promotion, much better presentation, some way to force fights to happen - but none of them will likely occur because as I also talked about before, Honey Badger (professional boxing) don't care. They seemingly have no interest, or no longer have any interest in bringing in the casual fan that makes other sports incredibly popular and socially relevant. If you train in boxing on any level, I highly recommend watching fights whenever you can. It is always a fun experience to watch a sport you used to not understand but now have some firsthand knowledge of. Plus it will make the sport more interesting in general. I can't support paying top dollar for it though. One thing that is kind of nice in the modern era is that you watch older, even recently older, fights all the time on YouTube. Despite all my old man crankiness, I love that I can just put on any classic fight I want whenever I want. Once again though, this is not an entry point for new fans. You have to actively seek it out instead of just being exposed to it. And I guess that kind of sums up my whole diatribe right there!