It?s a sad state of affairs when it?s September 26 and there?ll only be one fight worth seeing between today and the end of the year.
This past Saturday?s day of boxing, beginning with the solid Jorge Linares-Anthony Crolla scrap and ending with a courteous Donnie Nietes carrying badly faded Edgar Sosa through twelve lukewarm rounds, represented the last ?big? day in boxing until Ward-Kovalev on November 19.
There are fights on the schedule, of course. Some with recognizable names. But, except for that one big, bright shining star on November 19, there?s nothing to get excited about and certainly nothing that will give fans a payoff for what has been a truly forgettable year in the sport.
Manny Pacquiao, who could still draw an audience if he cared to try anymore, is booked into a PPV bout with Jessie Vargas on November 5?his most cynical cash grab since his team actually had the nerve to try and sell Chris Algieri as a PPV foe. Miguel Cotto, after exploring a handful of undersized soft touches for a late fall return, has apparently decided to just sit out the rest of the year. A lot has been made of the PBC fighters? lack of fight dates?Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia, Adonis Stevenson, Adrien Broner, even rising star Errol Spence look to all be sitting out the rest of the year?but PBC doom-wishers fail to acknowledge the lack of dates featuring guys like Timothy Bradley, Terence Crawford, and, for that matter, just about everyone associated with the HBO brand. And while everyone is sitting 2016 out, presumably looking to invest their money in some other possible non-boxing business venture, boxing?s de facto leader?the heavyweight champion of the world– has taken himself out of the picture as well. Tyson Fury, according to his trainer and uncle Peter Fury, fell into a funk over internet criticism and just can?t get up for a fight anytime soon.
Where does all this leave us as fans?
Fucked.
Imagine an NFL season starting and then just fizzling out because, well, nobody was much interested in playing the game anymore.
There will always be a huge subsection of boxing fans who refuse to accept the truth. Boxing, more so than any other sport, is characterized by a fan population hell bent on self-defeat. They?ll laugh off the idea of boxing dying?even when slapped in the face with year after year of declining business and dwindling fan base.
To say that the American boxing scene is dying is not paranoia or Chicken Little ?The Sky is Falling? rhetoric. It?s also not paranoia to say that foreign markets, which are booming now, will eventually dry up when their fans become more sophisticated and realize that what they?re seeing is not worthwhile matchmaking as much as it is pandering to eager, gullible consumers.
In the U.S., fighters and their people sense distress and are sitting things out, seeing where the business is headed. Nobody wants to risk a loss of earning potential by doing something crazy like taking a tough fight. Fans have shown them, in no small way, that challenging oneself is no longer a gateway to stardom and riches. Whether you?re fighting a killer or a Footlocker assistant manager, the paydays don?t vary all that much anymore.
Fans seem eager enough to support the shit fights and, because the sport has shrunken to such a great degree, the money available for the high end fights just isn?t there. So, as a result, a fighter like Leo Santa Cruz can make $750K fighting his sparring partner, but only $1 million fighting Carl Frampton. There?s not much of an added incentive to move from soft touches to legacy fights. Big credit goes to Santa Cruz for stepping up to take the challenge anyway, but you have to know that most fighters simply would not see the logic in taking a risky fight when there?s not that much more of a monetary gain in doing so.
For instance, if Timothy Bradley can make $1.5 million for fighting Jessie Vargas, why would he bother entertaining an offer to fight Terence Crawford for a purse not likely to exceed $2 million? That would be a horrible business decision. And even if promoter Bob Arum took a loss, dishing out more money to Bradley to secure a legacy fight for Crawford, what would be the point? Who can Crawford fight for a big enough payday to justify Arum?s investment? (Manny Pacquiao, yeah, but Manny?s in the same boat?he wouldn?t make all that much more money fighting Crawford than he would for fighting safer opponents like Vargas or Algieri).
The boxing business model is broken– and at the heart of the mess is the dysfunctional relationship between promoters who prefer to scam rather than promote and fans who can?t stop being dumb with their consumer dollars. The solution is for everyone to step up and start working towards a common good. How we do that, however, is a Rant for another day.
Until things get done, all we can do is sit and watch this sport dig its own grave. This year we begin to hear the start of a death rattle. Next year, maybe home hospice. Boxing will never truly die, but when a shrinking fan base meets an industry that has lost its ability to make a profit, bad stuff happens. Purses go down, the available talent pool shrinks even further, and the product suffers more. Then, more fans walk away and the downward spiral continues.
Sad days, indeed.
Sadder is the fact that there?s probably nobody in the business today capable and/or willing to work towards helping the long term health of the sport.
For now, all we can do is hold our breath and hope that Ward-Kovalev doesn?t get scrapped.
