Quote Originally Posted by powerpuncher View Post
I have come to realize that casual fans are what makes a sport popular or not. There will always be diehard fans of any sport or activity which will allow it to survive. In some ways, that’s actually better for the sport. It keeps it more pure. Once a sport gets popular, money gets involved and things become corrupt. I think that it’s great that these fighters or athletes are getting paid what they bring in, but a lot of problems come with this.

Anyway, my point is that I have seen so much of Loma being overrated and never being that good. This is mostly from the casual fans. Most real fans know that Loma was and still is a very good fighter. Because of this, the whole “don’t lose your 0” era has been created. Once you lose, casual fans stop caring about you.

So just like in all popular sports, diehard fans get the shaft because they don’t get to dictate the sport. The casuals dictate where it goes and how it is run. They care more about the pageantry and the “coolness” of it rather than the sport itself. It’s all just an unfortunate reality.
Good topic. IMO Boxing is the one sport where the die-hard fans are 1. smallest group of any sport & 2. as a result will allow shit to happen that other sports fans won't tolerate.

In NFL Football when bad officiating happens-scandals to cheats the uproar is great enough to make headlines. fines & suspensions happen on the regular I think of Bill Bellichick of the Pats. Spygate, deflate gate. Not that problems always gets solved, but enough that when I browsed their suspension list, one can tell that even though sports will always have cheats, bad conduct some sports can address it better than others. I truly think it is the result of diehard NFL fans that make it happen.
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/fines-suspensions/
Roughing the passer, unsportsman like conduct & something I just learned looking at this link: fines & or suspensions for conduct detrimental to the league. Just imagine if boxing would fine for multiple headbutts, combos to the nutsack. If detrimental conduct occurred a young Floyd Mayweather would've had mad fines to pay! And Mike Tyson? Instead we focus on drug/PED fines alone. IMO-Not good.

We diehards in boxing IMO are too small of a demographic to impact our sport for the better. So I think casual fans do us the most disservice, for example: all of us fight fanatics KNEW Mayweather Pacquiao happened way too late. But we couldn't stop the tsunami of PPV buys per casuals as a result, we get stuck with shit fights, shitty cards and shittier PPV costs.
When casual fans tune in for the superbowl, there is no price to force the diehard fan to come out the pocket. The worst for them is the casuals turning the 1/2 time into a 45 minute freakshow.

Quote Originally Posted by Beanz View Post
Those PPV's and ticket sales made by casuals do a lot to keep promoters, managers and fighters going (even lower down the card) when a lot of hardcore fans (myself included) may be content to watch the exact same fight the next day or on a free platform.

The closest analogy i can think of is Football or what the Americans would call Soccer. That has been largely ruined by casuals who in their millions will claim to support a team not even in their own country when the football league itself will have teams with thousands of loyal supporters who actually attend the games going under because they simply can not compete with foreign owned franchised playthings of the Premiership.
I think many of us will watch a PPV the next day because we know of every single one. Casual fans only know of the major PPVs I know quite a few lovers of sports and had no clue who the hell Charlo Brothers are, so that PPV IMO would only be bought by hardcore fans.

I'd love to disagree with you on the Soccer analogy. Wow millions are casuals? But I can't disagree cause I dont know a damn thing about soccer! I always assumed that those stories of soccer stadium stampedes, collapsing and fights were because they were all diehard!
I just wiki'd soccer stampede and was blown away to see how many occurred. Damn they be killin mofos by stampede?! I always assumed that was the depth of their loyalty to the sport. Liverpool/Manchester are like arch enemy fans?
Only a movie, but I've always envisioned this is how loyal fans are in football (soccer) outside USA.