How can American boxing rebuild itself?

The BYH one isn't? Ah criminy.

 

Getting rid of the alphabet soup of world boxing "associations" is a must.

Fighters fighting more than once or twice a year.

Better undercards.

No more Don King or Bob Arum.

That said, if a kid has enough athletic ability to be a professional athlete he's probably not choosing boxing because momma isn't going to let him.

 

Would the NFL remain as popular as it is if everyone had to go to a bar or pay $50 to see the Super bowl? How about baseball and the World Series or NBA and the Finals? The answer is no. When all your best stuff can't be seen by a large amount of people your popularity is going to suffer.

It's not the only reason but it is the biggest reason.

 

For the short term - launch a reality show/tournament. Every week features a five-round fight. Four judges and a "fan vote." The winner gets a title shot. Of course, you would have to get good boxers, not have their management muck things up.
Maybe even adopt a "season" for the sport at large so the end of each year has a "champion."
Cut the boxing federations and the weight classes to no more than eight or nine.

 

Everything that has been said on here so far.


Goodbye King and Arum

One boxing federation. That's it.

Streamline the weight categories. The last I checked, between all the alphabets and the weight categories, there was something like 120 champions. And that was not including the ridiculous "Champions in Waiting" and "Substitute champions" in which some guy was awarded a belt while the actual champion was hurt, "retired", etc. This ain't pro wrestling.

Put fights on regular TV. Save the PPVs for a couple of times a year. That's it. Stack the PPVs too, so that there's good fights top to bottom.

Fight in different places. Every big fight is in Vegas nowadays, with a few exceptions. That doesn't necessarily mean a heavyweight title fight in Shelby, Montana, but mix things up a little.

Have independent judges not hired by any commissions.

 

This is an issue for the Journalism board?

 

More fights on broadcast TV. Before NASCAR, college football and hoops, XGames-type events and beach volleyball took over, boxing was a staple of weekend programming on ABC and NBC.There were also those great shows Howard Cossell used to do before and after big heavyweiight fights.

Get rid of the alplabet soup, and do something like the Super Six (great in concept, but plagued by injuries) to determine the new champ.

If you get a champ with some personality, promote the hell out of him. I'm thinking of someone like Andre Ward currently. Of course, Ali is and will always be the gold standard.

 

Joe you're DEAD wrong. Pacquiao is only fighting Mosley because Mayweather is afraid to fight, he has used excuses such as the baseless steroid accusations against Pacquiao, he wants to clean up boxing with drug testing (he's done absolutely nothing on that), he's lost his urge to fight, he's on vacation, and the latest demand was he want's $100,000,000 to fight Pacquiao not $50,000,000. He's scared. 100% scared.

 

Having one title/one champion would be a great way to start.

A great American heavyweight wouldn't hurt either.

 

Agree with everything you said.

I never missed a Tyson fight. I liked Spinks a lot. Holyfield was OK. Lennox Lewis bored me. I liked Riddick Bowe.

Now, almost as a whole, other than the two matchups you mentioned, everything else is a snoozer.

 

A great American heavyweight is the Holy Grail obviously but boxing thrived in the 80s, in that dead-ball period between Holmes's prime and the ascension of Tyson, with great lighter-weight guys like Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Duran, Pryor, Arguello and others. Those guys fought a lot and fought each other.

As others have said, boxing needs to return to network TV where it was a weekend staple and helped build up the careers of the guys I mentioned and others like Ray Mancini. Boxing got way off track putting fights that would have been naturals for network TV back in the day on PPV. Even die-hard fight fans like me wouldn't shell out for the shit they were flogging. Same goes for live cards everywhere which match up the local hero against some hopeless dive artist and charge Vegas prices.

I'm no fan of UFC/MMA but they give people their money's worth and out on a good show.

 

Definitely mix in some free TV. Doesn't have to replace PPV, but you need a mix. And show it primetime, (Friday Night Fights, perhaps) not Saturday night at 11:30 when you run a good chance at whiffing on the news cycle with the general public. You get no buzz/no PR with anyone who didn't see the fight.

An example, and a bit of an aside--I can recall catching a routine boxing card on something like USA network on a weeknight in the late 70s. Ran across a bald, mean as hell looking dude named Marvin Hagler who was beginning to rise up the charts. Hardly missed a Hagler fight from then on.

A big-time American heavyweight. No matter how good the personalities and characters are at the lower weights, the sport has always been driven by a prominent American heavy.

Used to think you had to consolidate all the organizations into one. Now, not so sure you have to, though. it wouldn't hurt to reduce down some, but I don't think it's imperative there be only one sanctioning body.

Bring in Vince McMahon as a consultant. I say that half jokingly, but similar to MMA recently, wrestling has found a way to be a consistently successful product for what, two plus decades? And for a completely scripted sport. Maybe boxing could learn something from them.