How popular is the sport of Boxing?

[Hulk]

I h@te how Boxing is treated as a second rate sport. Hell, golf, tennis, and the WNBA seem to get more attention than boxing. Unless of course it is a Tyson or Oscar fight. Mainstream America just does not seem as interested in this great sport as I feel they should be. Most would rather watch frikin GOLF! >

[smashup]

It's weird is'nt it..
Same in the UK mate.i mean considering that some boxing purses "ECLIPSE" nearly every other sport on the Planet
i find it strange.

[jhar26]

Well,those other sports are much better organized. Boxing is just too confusing with it's WBC,WBA,IBF,WBO,FBI,CIA,KGB and it's zillion weight divisions. If you're the 150th best Golf or Tennis player in the world you're nowhere. If you're the P4P 150th best boxer in the world you probably are or were the holder of a world championship belt at some point in your career. How can we expect the average sports fan to make sense of it all? Even us real boxing fans can't. Another problem is television. In the US you have to pay $50 to see the best fights,in Europe (apart from the UK I guess,I live in Belgium) there's no boxing on television at all,except for Euro Sport where they only show third division fights. The result is that virtually no one knows the names of even the sports biggest stars. When De La Hoya,Trinidad,Hopkins,Klitchko or no matter who else fights you won't even find as much as a mention of the result in the newspapers over here. Boxing is completely,and I mean COMPLETELY ignored. Don't blame the media though (not entirely anyway),boxing itself has to get it's s*** together.

I h@te how Boxing is treated as a second rate sport. Hell, golf, tennis, and the WNBA seem to get more attention than boxing. Unless of course it is a Tyson or Oscar fight. Mainstream America just does not seem as interested in this great sport as I feel they should be. Most would rather watch frikin GOLF! >

[Wallace]

Part of the reason for me is the activity levels of the sport. The top names fight once or twice a year unlike in Golf, Tennis, Football (soccer!), where they play more regularly. In boxing you have to wait for the big fights where in other sports the top names are in action nearly every other week. With boxing you're left watching the up and coming fighters normally handing a beating to some poor sod who is in the ring to earn some cash, this only holds the attention for so long.

In addition for the neutral, fights like Gatti/Mayweather and Hopkins/Taylor do not do much for the sport. The first was a mismatch that if your not a big fan you would call boring, and the second again was boring for the first 8 rounds. If you only watch the sport for the big fights is it any wonder that you're left disattisfied after fights like these.

[feeney]

itv should bring boxing back up the top in britain. hopefully after a few months alot more people will get into it and it could be like benn and eubank days again.

[Mark TKO]

Unless you are a die-hard fan in the UK, you probably think Audley Harrison is a heavyweight contender and that Amir Khan is highly ranked and on verge of a world title shot.

Had several friends round for Hatton-Tszyu fight and not one had heard of Kostya. Last weekend I was telling them that Hopkins had lost and none had a clue who he was.

Annoying - you should have seen the look on one of the lad's faces when i told him Ali had retired........

[vex]

I agree boxing is not as popular as it used to be, it's just simply a confusing sport to follow for the mainstream sports fan. There just isn't no fighters with great star power, look back 8 years ago guys like de la hoya, tyson, lewis, and holyfield were the flagship guys for the sport, now who are the guys that represent boxing? we really have none. Also lack of a youthful audience has also hurt boxing, i read once somewhere that about 70-80% of boxing viewers are over the age of 35. Boxing simply isn't considered has being a "cool" sport anymore.

[boyla]

The only boxing i get to see in the uk is on way too late 2-3am ect on ch4 and 5, even the bbc doesnt show boxing at a primetime slot and it is usualy amateurs..
I thought it was in the top 5 sports but now after you mention tennis and golf, two very depressing sports it lucky to be in the top 10
Sky Sports have good coverage, but my parents can not afford it
Eurosport is hit and miss some of the fighters shown are embarresment to be called boxers, however it shows some good fights and good delayed fights. It also got me into K-1 and mma which is awesome, shame they can only do 3 and 5 rounds

[El Kabong]

I've noticed more boxing promotions around my hometown in the form of billboards, ads, and actual boxing matches HOWEVER the newspaper had 0 on the Hopkins-Taylor bout....I mean NOTHING on the middleweight championship of the world. But whenever Iron Mike is in the news he gets in the newspaper here.

The internet is the best thing to happen to boxing since television!

[smashup]

Part of the reason for me is the activity levels of the sport. The top names fight once or twice a year unlike in Golf, Tennis, Football (soccer!), where they play more regularly. In boxing you have to wait for the big fights where in other sports the top names are in action nearly every other week. With boxing you're left watching the up and coming fighters normally handing a beating to some poor sod who is in the ring to earn some cash, this only holds the attention for so long.

In addition for the neutral, fights like Gatti/Mayweather and Hopkins/Taylor do not do much for the sport. The first was a mismatch that if your not a big fan you would call boring, and the second again was boring for the first 8 rounds. If you only watch the sport for the big fights is it any wonder that you're left disattisfied after fights like these.

Thats a good point because back in the day fighters fought 10-20 some even 30 times a year (i kid you not)
So there really is a lack of exposure to some people,saying that you'd think with the internet and Sky that MORE people would be exposed to it..

I Blame the promoters for there snails pace big fight match-ups..

The BIG BIG fights are way to few and far between and people get bored easily watching mediocre fights.

We wanna see the top fighters fighting each other on a regular basis but Boxing Politics always seems to get in the way >

[jhar26]

Well,I don't think there are any "depressing sports" really. Each sport requires a lot of skil if you want to reach the top,gotta respect that. I have no problem if other people prefer golf,soccer,baseball,tennis or whatever.....different strokes for different folks. The REAL problem is not the popularity of those and other sports but the fact that these sports do a much better job of reaching out to their potential audience. Every tennis,golf or soccer  fan knows what the most important events are and who won them. In boxing we don't even know for sure who the real heavyweight champ is. In fact,if you live in,say Germany you might be excused for thinking that Sven Ottke is the most important fighter of the last ten years. 99% of the people out there simply haven't got a clue,and it ain't their fault but the blame must go completely to the way boxing is organized and presented. If we would have,say eight weight divisions again and only one universally recognized champ per division,and all their fights could be viewed by everyone the world over for free I don't doubt for a minute that boxing would be in the top 5 of the most popular sports again in no time.

The only boxing i get to see in the uk is on way too late 2-3am ect on ch4 and 5, even the bbc doesnt show boxing at a primetime slot and it is usualy amateurs..
I thought it was in the top 5 sports but now after you mention tennis and golf, two very depressing sports it lucky to be in the top 10
Sky Sports have good coverage, but my parents can not afford it
Eurosport is hit and miss some of the fighters shown are embarresment to be called boxers, however it shows some good fights and good delayed fights. It also got me into K-1 and mma which is awesome, shame they can only do 3 and 5 rounds

[Green Burger]

I don't understand why nobody likes boxing.

GOLF gets more attention than boxing! Boxing is a great sport (when results are legitamately decided). Powerful KOs and action fights are better to watch than anything in any other sport.

I'm a baseball fan but it's hard for me to sit through 3 hours of baseball. I'd rather just watch 2 guys in the ring beating the crap out of eachother.

[The_One77]

Fact is, is that most great fighters are unknown in the uk, apart from british ones.
I'm 16, and before i became a boxing fan i didn't know who oscar, klitzkcho, hopkins, roy jones, floyd mayweather, or any big fighter's around were.
I don't have sky, so boxing is not on any of the channels. Even now, i am forced to download fights in order to know whats happening today in the world of boxing.

Over here in England we only see football, tennis, snooker (don't think the yanks have heard of that) and atlhetics.

Hell!, i didn't evem know who Joe Louis was a couple of years ago.

[jhar26]

The main difference is that Golf gets the right kind of attention and boxing doesn't. In golf you get to see the best players competing against each other in the majors. In boxing you get to see two guys,one of whom has a 20/0 and the other a 2/14 record fight each other for one of the twenty alphabet titles in one of the million weight divisions. And the casual sports fan believes that these are actually the best fighters in the world because he or she doesn't get to see (and so doesn't know) the real stars of the sport unless he or she pays $50,and even that option is only available to the happy few. How popular do you think baseball or basketball would be if people never got to see the major teams? How popular do you think tennis would be if they only televised some minor Grand Prix tournaments and if we had a WTA,WTC,ITO,ITF Wimbledon,US Open,French Open and Australian Open champ?

I don't understand why nobody likes boxing.

GOLF gets more attention than boxing!

[Green Burger]

Maybe tournaments will help the popularity. Very regulated tournaments, with brackets and shit like the college basketball fans go crazy over. Each round is fought on specific days on one card, and they make it like some sort of reality show or something. It would ruin boxing as we know it but make it more appealing to the public.