I was a toddler when I first started hanging around boxing gyms, following my uncle around as he alternated between working with fighters and telling bitter/funny stories of the old days. But I didn?t really fall in love with boxing until I saw Sugar Ray Leonard beat Wilfred Benitez live on ABC.
Leonard-Benitez set off a mad love affair that has lasted some 40 odd (very odd) years. But even my love for the sport (and the fact that it represented the lion?s share of my personal earnings since the year 2000) was not enough to stop me from nearly walking away completely in 2016.
Put off by an uninspiring schedule and the realities of a cancerous business model that wasn?t going to change any time soon, I just stopped caring about most of what was happening in the sport. It also didn?t help that I had become immersed in the general ickiness of a boxing media that was doggedly battling to starve me into another line of work. I was done with boxing.
But that ?done? only lasted through a summer break before the masochist in me took hold once again and I fought back to regain my passion and my livelihood.
All this came to mind today when I found out that the upcoming Manny Pacquiao-Adrien Broner pay-per-view had a $75 price tag attached to it.
Don?t get me wrong, I actually like this fight. I don?t think Pacquiao is as old and decrepit as the angst-ridden ?Please retire, Manny? articles paint him to be and Broner is not quite the bumbling walking World Star waste of space he?s portrayed to be, either. But both ARE just diminished enough, just needy enough to make this a compelling matchup and a ?must win? fight.
Seventy-five bucks, however, is crazy.
In another piece on another site, I did a rough estimate about how much it costs to be a loyal boxing fan these days. The figure, when calculating everything? streaming service subscriptions and premium cable prices, as well as regular cable fees?was a whopping $1700 bucks a year. And that?s not even taking into account PPV events which currently range anywhere from $60 to $100 a pop.
The consumer getting stuck with all the bills, having to pay twice and thrice to see the sport they love, would be somewhat justifiable if the consumers were actually getting the fights they wanted. But there?s no Terence Crawford-Errol Spence, Mikey Garcia-Vasiliy Lomachenko, or Anthony Joshua-Deontay Wilder, etc. on the schedule.
Fight fans, in general, are getting lesser fights hyped to be bigger events than they are. And they?re being billed for that privilege of watching something they?re only watching because what they REALLY want to watch isn?t being made available. To make matters worse, there?s absolutely no movement towards actually giving the consumers what they want on a more consistent basis. As a matter of fact, recent shifts in the boxing business model are making big fight matchmaking even more complicated.
So, at what point does a fight fan walk away? At what point is enough, enough? At what point is there too much money being asked, too much loyalty demanded, for too little in return?
Personally, I know of several hardcore fans (and writers) who soured on the bullshit that surrounds the sport and simply chose to walk away or bury themselves in the safe nostalgia of better days. It?s hard to maintain a great enthusiasm for dining on sausage when one spends too much time in a slaughterhouse.
Much is required of boxing fans, who are routinely asked to overlook incompetence, corruption, bad business models, and, some would argue, a general downgrade in the overall skill level of the athletes and the quality of the sport?s matchmaking. To also ask them to foot the bill for everything, all the time?it just seems like adding insult to injury.
I?m still here, loving the sport enough to keep watching and to keep fighting the good fight as a writer, but I honestly wouldn?t feel too bad about walking away. The sport hasn?t exactly been loyal to any of us in recent years, so it?s certainly no surprise when someone decides that the love affair is over.
