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!
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