By: Danny Kendrick
In light of what’s happened in this year’s London Games with no U.S. Boxing team member even medaling got me thinking about the rhymes and reasons for this unfortunate change for the worse in United States amateur boxing. Of course, this is not a sudden “fall from grace.” It’s been a steady decrease for some time now. After the special U.S. team of 1984 that captured 11 medals altogether, the number of medalists steadily decreased. Taking into consideration that from time to time special circumstances arise and that team certainly was extraordinary, the 1988 team still had a very strong showing with 8 medals as a team. From there is where it gets progressively worse and with the good showing of the ’96 team being the exception with 6 team medals, the teams of the 2000’s have combined so far for a total of 7 medals. It’s time to stop blaming the general excuses for this decline and consider some extenuating circumstances, I’d say.
Certainly, there are political motivations to certain members who end up on the starting roster. This is not only an issue in amateur boxing. Many other sports, if not every one of them, have this complaint. The actual best person misses the starting spot because of what a teammate’s father donates to the team or how often dad and coach go fishing together. One of my own brothers along with a few of his teammates encountered this when they wrestled for a particular state’s national freestyle team the summer after he graduated from high school. It’s an ugly part of athletics that, unfortunately, you have to eventually deal with. By and large, however, the “cream rises to the top” eventually. In boxing, the outside circumstances go even further because of it’s professional lucrative business nature. Sanctioning bodies and promotional companies have surely done their part in depriving the sport of it’s one time glory and they are partly to blame for what I personally consider to be the single greatest explanation for the decline in the sport of boxing: the absence of boxing on primetime television.
In the 1970’s and 80’s, aspiring young athletes could regularly tune in to ABC’s Wide World of Sports and watch the sports elite display their world class skillset against top flight competition. Then, in the 1980’s, satellite cable rivals HBO and Showtime, with the help of promotion companies TVKO and Top Rank, began contracting the most marketable names of the sport, most notably Mike Tyson, who was a massive ratings draw of that time and years to come. Now, fans both hardcore and prospective alike, had to purchase cable packages to watch the marquee names of the sport compete since ESPN had also come to be the sport world’s undisputed industry leader and also showed their fair share of boxing on their ‘Friday Night Fights’ segment.
With HBO, cable viewers paid ADDITIONALLY to include the box office movie channel in their package and here’s where the problem with would-be fighters from lower income families begins since they would most likely not be able to afford the extra package, if they could afford cable television at all. Since many athletes, especially those who compete sports, historically come from non wealthy homes, their sport has served as a way out of their poor or near impoverished life. Even those who may have developed a healthy interest in boxing who weren’t what would be considered “poor” would likely fall into the country’s large middle class percentage and their families also don’t have all the money in the world to have afforded many additional luxuries without stressing themselves into an early grave. The viewing of boxing became less and along with it, the potential talent pool decreased.
I wish it stopped there, but then we’d be forgetting about Pay-Per-View. This is where it REEEEALLY gets messy. Starting in 1975’s ‘Thrilla in Manilla’ and continuing on to the 1980 showdown between ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran, television networks began charging an extra fee of $10 to view the sports most marquee events. From there, the 1981 war between Leonard and Thomas ‘Hit Man’ Hearns to 1987’s classic involving Leonard and ‘Marvelous’ Marvin Hagler were all predecessors to what is today a staple in professional boxing. As inflation increased so did the price for Pay-Per-View events. Now, along with whatever it is a customer pays a month for his/her satellite or cable bill, ranging on average between $30 to $90 per month, that customer can also expect to shell out another $50 to observe the fighter(s) he/she is a fan of.
Coinciding with that, viewers basically need to have a cable or satellite package to even view fights since it’s only the additional package channels that show fights and one can’t watch a Pay-Per-View event without one of these packages in the first place unless of course, the fight is being shown in a public venue, but with the lack of marquee names left, most public places won’t show a fight unless the billing has the name Mayweather or Pacquiao on it so you can see how often that happens. There is a saying in boxing that says, “as the heavyweight division goes, so goes the rest of boxing.” At a quick glance of the overall landscape, this would appear to be the case since there are no seemingly viable contenders on the horizon for the Klitschko brothers, but dig a little deeper and it’s easy to see the connection in the drop in young talent to the nonexistence of boxing on primetime television. Oh, if you’re a hardcore fan then you can appreciate seeing journeymen battle it out on ‘Friday Night Fights’ to get back into title contention.
However, for the casual fan or athletically talented kid, seeing guy’s he’s never heard of duke it out in a sport he never thought of trying, it doesn’t harness that attention that makes him think that maybe one day he can be in that limelight. Can you imagine what it would do to escalate the sport back into it’s one time stature if Floyd Mayweather, Jr. showcased his phenomenal talent once a year on primetime television for ALL to see? Back up that main event with the future stars of the sport such as Gary Russell, Jr., Adrien Broner, Nonito Donaire, and Yuriorkis Gamboa. A few shows like that and the domino effect of mainstream public interest would be incredible. Of course we’d all love to see corrupt promoters and sanctioning body officials get weeded out so as to diminish the likelihood of rigged decisions and hindered matches between the best in the game, but even with their involvement, a deal with a primetime network would do wonders for the sport that would reap benefits for many years ahead.
Just look at what the constant viewing exposure of the UFC on television networks has done for their talent stable and how many young fighters compete to be on their talent building camp, ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’ This is where boxing once was and could be again. The tunnel vision money making aspirations of greedy promoters have caused a continual decrease in the fanbase of this great sport and it’s high time to stop following the status quo. It’s time to think outside the box which, in this case, means go back to the basics. Maybe it’s just my personal opinion, though……
