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NOTES FROM THE BOXING UNDERGROUND: THE MORE WE FIGHT...

By Paul Magno | November 19, 2018
NOTES FROM THE BOXING UNDERGROUND: THE MORE WE FIGHT...

Boxing is a business. I say it a lot in this weekly column, but it’s something we need to never forget. 

Those who have invested money and time into working in the business aren’t washed over in nostalgia or burning to fulfill the macho fairytale fantasies of fans and members of the media. They are not dealing in the nobility of man or interested in testing the boundaries of the human spirit. They’re not even all that interested in making thrilling and competitive fights, unless those thrilling and competitive fights deliver a hefty payout. 

No. boxing businessmen are looking to make money, looking to get a return on their investments. Love for the sport may have fueled their entry into the business, but at the end of the day, this is about making a living and about filling up bank accounts. It’s true for the promoters. It’s true for the managers. It’s true for the fighters, themselves. 

Boxing, at its core, is a business like any other business. Spend as little as possible and make as much as possible by delivering just enough product to consumers to keep them buying. 

The problem in boxing is that the consumers have been somehow convinced to take sides with rival business entities rather than simply play the role of consumers.

These days, fans are more inclined to buy into promotional and network TV rivalries than they are fighter vs. fighter rivalries. And with the choosing of sides, comes the defending of those sides. If DAZN puts on a shitty card, some will point the finger at a shitty card PBC may be putting on. If Top Rank is shoveling filler into an ESPN date, the TR defenders will point out filler in another network’s show. 

It’s a bizarre, apparently boxing-specific mindset that just makes absolutely no sense.

Imagine fast food consumers taking sides like this. It would be like Burger King fans dealing with an ugly dip in quality, not by avoiding the restaurant, but by taking swipes at Wendy’s. Or, what if McDonald’s loyalists overlooked mad price hikes, kept paying the prices, but then obsessed on Burger King’s price hikes. 

Again, it makes no sense. 

Divide and conquer is probably the best term for what has been going on in the boxing business. Tribalism has taken over and fans are no longer angry about the quality of the content they’re receiving as much as they are angry about what the “other” sides are getting away with. Politicians have done this beautifully and we can see the mess that has taken us to. 

What brought this topic to mind was PBC’s recent rolling out of its Fox schedule for early 2019. To be fair, it’s not great. The PR line is that they’ll be building towards bigger things as time progresses and we’ll just have to wait and see on that. 

In the meantime, though, the folks at PBC are absolutely not alone in issuing disappointing fight schedules. Last time I checked, just about everybody is swinging and missing these days. Subscription fees are being collected by several companies for content that is just not that good. Nobody is doing all that many A-side vs. A-side fights these days.

One somewhat high-profile writer recently saw fit to scribble out a piece about the PBC schedule bringing out a “sad realization” of sad days in the sport. He expressed his maudlin longings for better days and his utter frustration at intentionally poor matchmaking before concluding that all of this PBC negativity had pushed him to the brink of depression. His “own zest for following the players and the matchups” had been impacted. So sad.

Yet, not too long ago, this same writer was not quite as critical of the announced Canelo Alvarez-Rocky Fielding suck fest and, overall, was pretty even-handed and diplomatic when the DAZN folks rolled out a pretty crappy fight schedule themselves. Maybe he was so even-handed and diplomatic because the Eddie Hearn-led streaming outfit had rolled out the red carpet for him weeks earlier, taking time to pass along their talking points and stroke his ego. Actually, he pretty much admits this to be the case.

“I think Eddie Hearn gets more free passes than does PBC, because, no great surprise, Eddie is charming and open to media,” he wrote in a follow up piece to his PBC slam. “And Bob Arum gets free passes, too, because he is open with media, and gives of his time to chat with us, come on out [to] shows. This is what it is, this is human nature in play. This is called ‘media relations’ and ‘public relations’ and it works.”

It sure does.

But it’s not supposed to work, not with legitimate media, anyway. 

But this all plays into the us vs. them mentality. If PBC is the bad guy, then they are to be shamed publicly. If DAZN or Top Rank or Golden Boy are the bad guys, they need to be shamed publicly. And, meanwhile, you protect “your side.” Even if some won’t come right out and admit it, we should all know what’s going on. Sometimes it’s innocent bias; Sometimes, it’s not so innocent. 

All I’m saying is that BS is BS and EVERYONE is guilty of shoveling it. The more we fight amongst ourselves in defense of our “side,” the easier it is to take advantage of us. They don’t have to give us the quality we deserve if they can get us pointing fingers and checklisting the other side’s perceived wrongdoings. 

A unified fandom, backed by a truly fair and independent media would hold feet to fire and would force a cooperative business structure. Instead, the business has been remade in the image of the squabbling masses and the cynical powerbrokers at the very top, who are very willing to make quick scores at the expense of the sport’s long-term health.

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