The Current State of the Sport of Boxing

By Niall Doran

People always ask why is the sport of boxing boxing dying? Why are other sports like mma becoming more popular? However I really don’t think this is the case, well not as much as it’s made out to be. I think boxing may in fact be only slightly in decline for some reasons outside it’s own powers (worldwide economic recession). However there are some things that need to be changed to insure boxing as a sport moves with the times and grows as we progress further into the 21st century.

I think the fundamental problem now with boxing is not just the promoters but the amount of different belts that supposedly represent a world title. Without naming names it seems like these days there is a new world title belt every month. I can see why this was done though from a commercial standpoint. If there’s more belts you can promote more events as having world title bouts on them which obviously makes more money. But from a credibility point of view it takes away from the sport and makes it look like there are a load of mickey mouse type belts been passed around. Obviously a lot of promoters have not helped boxing’s current situation either. Whether it be a promoter refusing to work with another promoter/promotional company to make a fight happen or a promoter keeping their fighters fighting eachother under the same banner to keep all the money ‘in house’ as they say. The result is the same – which is the hurting of boxing. Another problem I feel that has been there for some time now is the lack of an exciting and engaging heavyweight champion for the public to latch onto. If you go right back through the sport it was always the heavyweight championship that drew the masses to boxing.

Going forward into 2013 and years beyond I think there is a few fundamental changes that need to be made to ensure this great sport continues to grow and get the attention it deserves. I think if there was one unified title and governing body that all boxers and promoters had to rank themselves against (on world title level) then this would clear a lot of the confusion amongst fans that is out there at the moment. Perhaps if all the current governing bodies combined to work together and share equal profits this might be achieved. If promoters also were at some point actually forced to make fights happen by the world body then perhaps fight fans around the world would get to see more of the fights they actually want to, not what promoters want them to see. Just a thought.

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