Has boxing become a joke?

[Irwin R. Schyster]

With all these athletes and stupid internet stars entering the ring, do you feel that this has brought boxing back to life, or, has it become a complete joke?

Growing up. boxing was taken seriously, the intensity was off the charts, you could feel the fact one guy wanted to beat the bloody hell out of the other guy.

Now, it's a retired basketball player getting knocked out by a youtube star. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the classics putting up a fight, though, it obviously wasn't as intense as when they were young and didn't run out of breath, but, these random people wanting to take a stab at it just pisses it away for me. At the same time, in general, the younger generation is taking notice with more familiar names to them.

Thoughts?

 

[Roadster]

Boxing isn't in the position to protects its sanctity. I've been an avid boxing fan for years, and realistically, there isn't much to save when it's already been torn apart. Boxing promoters thought they found the golden formula by feeding peaheads to the top guys for years in order to build extreme hype, little did they know that people tend to stop giving a shit when there's 1 massive fight every 5 years. These white collar-turned-professional boxers and fights have been a bit of a reprieve for a sport that is hemorrhaging. The model is outdated, down to the core; the promoters, the way fighters are marketed, the way fights are hyped. If Jake Paul is able to bring eyes and someone with the intention of wrangling together the sport, I don't care if he knocks out a dozen retired basketball players.

 

[Aids Johnson]

or

 

[Roadster]

or

 

[CM Punk]

Been a joke more recently but the judging the past few years have been dogshit too so

 

[Geese]

Fight fans and writers always complain about the state of the boxing business. In 1996, Ring Magazine writer Jeff Ryan complained about how bad boxing was on the free TV stations, this was at a time when ABC and CBS was heavily investing in the sweet science and featuring such fighters as Marco Antonio Barrera, Larry Holmes, Aaron "Superman" Davis, Raul Marquez, Bernard Hopkins and ABC aired a Heavyweight title fight for free: Michael Moorer vs. Axel Schultz.

FS1, ESPN, and Showtime airs fights which features Claressa Shields, Miguel Berchelt, Gary Russell Jr., and Teofimo Lopez. If the news focuses on a youtube celeb fighting a basketball star, the press is all over it.

 

[Roadster]

There's plenty to blame Bob Arum & Eddie Hearn for, not neccesarily the current mockery.

They've built a formula that has slowly killed off fans interests. No one wants to wait 2-5 years for a big fight to happen with 6-7 squash matches just to pad stats. The reason that Joshua v. Ruiz got so much hype because it was a squash match to bide time for Joshua and Joshua lost. The promoters panicked and put a rematch straight away. Now if this was any super fight, the rematch would not happen for the next 3 years, at the very least.

I really do hope UFC finally gets into the boxing game. The promoters killed boxing, and if anyone can market a fight and build fights, fresh fights and anticipated fights on time it's the UFC.

 

[Cam!]

I just think the dumb shit that Barstool Sports is pulling with amateur wrestling events (Like Rough 'N Rowdy) is far more entertaining than any major boxing match that I've seen in a long time. For example, Barstool had Jose Canseco (former baseball player) boxing a Barstool intern a couple of days ago. It ended up being a joke of a fight, but there was a lot more excitement/fun involved, especially with how it was promoted. There hasn't been a fight I've been excited about it since McGregor/Mayweather, and that's one of those matches that shouldn't really count because one of the individuals wasn't really a boxer.