Death By Promotion: The Decline of Boxing
By: Jace Garcia
There is something that always draws people to a fight. Like my co host Jared likes to say, “If there is a basketball game on one corner, a football game on the other, a baseball game on another, and a fight on the last corner, everyone is drawn to a fight”. That is what has made boxing what it is today. Everyone likes seeing a fight, but the thing that makes people want to see the fight, is WHO is fighting.
Boxing is a star-driven sport, as the pay per view being the business model for boxing, you need fighters who are worth paying to watch fight. A hardcore boxing fan is gonna know who is good, and who is not, and probably will buy a pay-per-view for any boxing match, but when it comes to getting the casuals to buy it, you need two stars of the sport to collide. If you go back in boxing history, the biggest fights are the best-of-the-best fighting for who is the actual best, Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson vs Lennox Lewis, and Sugar Ray Leonard vs Tommy Hearns, but the biggest fight in history based off pay-per-view buys is what has led to today’s problems inboxing, Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao.
The Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight was something boxing fans wanted for a long time before we actually got it, and in that fight Pacquiao was no longer the killer he was in his early career and Mayweather knew what he was doing by prolonging this fight, finding the perfect opportunity to fight Pacquiao, which was the start of this era that we have now, where the promoters are killing boxing.
We used to get the best vs the best a lot in boxing and those fights and multi-fight rivalries is what led to the greats becoming great, Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield, Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier, Jake LaMotta vs Sugar Ray Robinson, Arturo Gatti vs Micky Ward, Sugar Ray Leonard vs Roberto Duran, and Evander Holyfield vs Riddick Bowe.
Those were the fights we wanted and those are fights when they were done we wanted to see again, that is something we do not get in this era. The big fight to make in 2018 was Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder and that fight never materialized because of the promoters not seeing eye to eye. People will say what they want to say, “Wilder was scared of Joshua” and vice versa, “Joshua was scared of Wilder that is why the fight did not happen”, but that is not true: there was a lot of unde-handed tactics and grimmy stuff between the promoters with the contracts that led to that fight not materializing, do you think any of the great fighters in history would have let that happen, do you
think Muhammad Ali would let his promoter say no he is not gonna fight Frazier? No, because that was a time where fighters fought the best fighters. Then after that fight fell through Wilder got another fight, that as a boxing fan I personally loved when it was announced, with Tyson Fury and, it was the fight of the year of 2018 and brought a lot of casual fans to realize how good
these two are, but the rematch is slated for February 2020. When Mike Tyson lost to Evander Holyfield he did not wait a year and a half for a rematch, they fought again within a year.
Now we do have a fight coming up in December of 2019 that is a rematch of an upset that happened in June with Ruiz vs Joshua 2, but looking back Joshua lost his belts to Ruiz in a fight that was not on pay-per-view, to someone that no one knew going into that fight, when he could have taken the Wilder fight in 2018 and set up for a possible great trilogy, with all the fights on pay-per-view and a lot more money, but instead the promoters took that from Joshua now, he lost his belts and experienced brain trauma from a knockout loss, and while all that happened did not make as much as he would if he took the Wilder fight, all because of the promoters.
While the heavyweight division is having trouble with promoters working together to make the fights with Canelo and GGG, there is a different problem with promoters in the fight. It is well documented that the commissions work with promoters and the fighters to pick out the judges for the fight, but what is not as documented is that prior to the fight, you can walk into the nicest restaurant in whatever city the fight is taking place in, and see a table of judges and promoters, and guess who is getting the bill, the promoters. The promoters schmooze the judges to get them to benefit their fighter, and that is what happened in Canelo and GGG’s first fight.
I am not against draws, but that fight unjustly ended in a draw, not because the fight was not a draw, I understand the logic of that fight being a draw, but if you know anything about boxing, if you had to pick a winner in that fight, GGG was the winner. GGG landed 218 total punches to Canelo’s 169, GG landed 108 total jabs to Canelo’s 55, and the only category Canelo was lead GGG on was power punches with 114, but that was only 4 more than GGG’s 110 total power punches landed. People like to say stats don’t lie and if you buy that GGG won, like I said, I understand a draw, but the egregious part about the draw decision is one judge had it 118–110. That means she only gave 2 rounds to GGG, and if stats don’t lie, he definitely won more than 2 rounds based off the numbers, the other judges gave it 115–113 GGG and 114–114 making the fight end in a split draw. Canelo’s promoters took this judge out the dinner schmoozed her, because everyone knows Canelo, and with a Canelo victory, there is more money to be made and that is what led to that heinous scorecard.
Die-hard boxing fans are always going to love boxing and will tune in no matter what, but the thing that keeps boxing afloat and have a real impact on pop culture are the great fights being made and thus producing stars. The biggest boxing match in recent history was not the great fights I just mentioned, Canelo vs GGG and Wilder vs Fury, but Mayweather vs McGregor, a freaking MMA fighter, is a bigger draw in boxing than world champion boxers, and that is because the UFC is coming in and doing what boxing used to do, but no longer does and give us the fights we want, when we want them. The promoters are ruining boxing and may even lead to boxing death. The upcoming generation of millennials care more about UFC than they do boxing
and that is all because of how the promoters handle putting together big fights.
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