Sick joke ricocheting around the canyons of bloody, battered Wall Street: “Do you know the difference between 1929 and 2009?”
Sick but possibly accurate answer: “Me, neither.”
The worldwide financial mess won?t leave boxing alone. The old view was economic hard times made for more and hardier fighters.
It may be time for a new view and that is everybody at every level of boxing is going to feel the financial pain that looks to be enduring.
Even promoters are getting punchy. Lou DiBella, who usually sees calamity ahead at all times, has been reduced to echoing FDR’s “we have nothing to fear but fear” itself line.
Here are the areas I see being especially pinched in our mundo de boxeo:
CASINOS: They are taking a beating as people can?t afford the gas to get to them. Las Vegas is seeing casino drops dropping precipitously as air travel thins out. Even when players get to a casino, they will risk less money because they have less money. When casinos feel the pinch, then site fees paid to promoters?well, look out below. Unfortunately, the first glaring example may be the Kelly Pavlik-Bernard Hopkins fight Oct. 18 in Atlantic City. How many fans from Youngstown can afford the total expense required to support The Ghost in person?
BOXERS PURSES: PPV TV will take a pasting and it doesn?t take a genius to see the 2009 PPV boxing calendar shrinking. Fighters purses in general will shrink. And that means less dough for agents, managers and promoters.
TELEVISION: Beyond PPV, those licensing fees from HBO, Showtime and others will have to get smaller as the prime cable networks take the same roller-coaster ride everyone else in mass media is experiencing. Again, less money then trickles down to the fighters. (Notable exception: those deep pockets in Germany. As usual, it’s a good time even during a bad time to be Mr. Peter Kohl, Mr Wilfried Sauerland or the Klitschko Brothers.)
COMMISSIONS: As state budgets get cut and cut, there will be less money for proper supervision of boxing. Even in places where the commissions run a tight ship, there will be budgetary trimming.
I hate to be such a gloom and doom type, a Cassandra of pugilism, but brace yourself.
I know there must be some upside somewhere, right?
THE WINNER: ESPN and the Spanish language lower case boxing series. They all stand to get offered better fights and better fighters at lower prices than they pay now. In cheapskate ESPN?s case, they might start giving main events ten bucks and a bag of chips. But the bottom level of TV boxing will be a beneficiary from the belt-tightening at the top.
POSSIBLE WINNERS: Fight fans if the TV paymasters start demanding that boxing’s true young stars start fighting each other. The cable checkwriters can demand that the best fight the best and forget the elderly types with their “name value” and little else. HBO and Showtime can start bellowing, it’s my way or the highway and really mean it. Overly protective promoters take notice!
Excuse me, please as I?m buying as many apples wholesale as I can. I?m hoping to ?corner? the apple-selling market at West 100 Street and Broadway.
