Whatever one’s opinion is on this weekend’s boxing spectacle in California between English and American YouTube stars KSI and Logan Paul — no one can argue with the showing by both men at the end of the fight.
Yes, this weekend was purely entertainment-driven and was not in anyway meant to be representative of any type of standard of professional boxing.
No technical or subtle nuances of the sweet science were to be conveyed this weekend.
We knew that going in.
It was an attempt for boxing to reach out to a new fan base to two gargantuan YouTube channels.
Largely, boxing succeeded in doing so — in terms of the numbers both men generated and eyeballs cast on the sport.
How many of those new fans return to watch real professional boxing next year remains to be seen of course.
But in any new venture, new ideas must be trialed and tried out.
Those that work kept on and incrementally improved on.
Those that don’t quickly binned.
At the end of the fight the two men showed a moment of class when they put any ill will behind each other and in many ways, this moment was a great advert for boxing in that the courage it takes to get in the ring in the first place was exhibited by two entertainers who then showed respect when all was said and done:
As you can see from the above tweet, it has gone down very well online and is going viral as we speak.
KSI won the bout via split decision in the end and can be seen here on YouTube talking about the fight a short time ago at the post-fight press conference:
Will there be another fight between the two?
Probably not.
The main thing for the sport of boxing here is to see what kind of numbers it generated and furthermore, what implications could those figures have for the sport moving forward — in terms of similar future events being distributed in an attempt to diversify and grow the audience again.
As for KSI and Logan Paul will they step foot in a ring ever again?
Who knows but one thing is for sure — they both made quite a bit of money for tonight’s spectacle.
