Mayweather-Pacquiao Is an Easy Sell; Boxing Isn’t

"The most recent Saturday night P.B.C. on NBC telecast, on April 11, averaged 2.9 million viewers. That made it the second-most-watched professional boxing broadcast since “Oscar De La Hoya’s Fight Night,” a Fox broadcast on March 23, 1998, that drew 5.9 million viewers. Still, the audience figure was down from NBC’s first P.B.C. event, in March, which drew 3.4 million." Huh - wouldn't that make it the THIRD most watched pro boxing broadcast since 3/23/98?

So how's this a fair cut down the middle fight lol not even. But I'll predict PAC Wins

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is anathema in football, soccer and other sports. Billions are spent to prevent, treat and compensate victims. In boxing one is paid to inflict a TBI on their opponent. The public cheers them on and shakes their head mournfully at Ali who has dementia pugilistica. Boxing should not be banned. It should be shunned like dog fighting, shame on NBC.

Any one who buys or attends this fight is supporting a wife/girlfriend beater. Where is the kind of outrage that was leveled at Ray Rice? How is it Mayweather is even being allowed to work given the calls from the sports industry writ large to ban Rice for identical behavior?

Too many fans have dumped money on PPV to see boring or short fights. Now they learned to wait for the result, then watch it for free.....if it's worth watching.

I lost interest in boxing after Ali retired.

I used to sit with my father and watch the Friday night fights on TV. It was fun. Boxing used to be more of a sport than a bloodbath.

Sports fans who want violence have been able to turn to hockey and football, eroding the boxing base.

what a joke, all hype and no losers. what kind of fight is that? millions if you win, millions if you lose\win

I think attributing the dwindling viewership, even in part, to lack of middle class white guy fighters is off the mark and, frankly, insulting. When have middle class white guys ever been significant participants in boxing? I don't need to see myself in the ring to enjoy the sport or respect the fighters. Boxing is no more violent than it ever has been. Less probably with fewer rounds and a ref much more likely to jump in and stop the fight than in the past. UFC and MMA fighting is much more violent and its viewership is on the rise.

As a kid growing up in the 70's and 80's I remember watching all the big fights on television. I wasn't a die hard fan nor was my Dad. But we tuned in for the title fights and talked about boxing occasionally. We would watch it in the Olympics. I think this comment, for me, sums up why I barely pay attention any longer to the sport.

"..a business model that puts the sport’s premier events behind an expensive pay wall. What if the N.F.L. and its broadcast partners demanded $89.95 a household — the suggested price for Saturday’s Mayweather-Pacquiao fight — to watch the Super Bowl?"

It's not that I don't like boxing. I refuse to pay the ridiculous price to watch a big fight. It's also the reason I rarely go to see professional sports of any kind live. The cost is way out of line for the entertainment value. If you aren't watching, you eventually lose interest all together.

The boxing workout is the best type of exercise around which, when combined with a good diet and sufficient sleep is very healthy. Boxing at the amateur level involves head gear, large gloves, and a sanctioning system that makes it a relatively safe sport which could gradually be integrated into the pro level and introduce a level of safety not before seen. Many kids born on dead-end streets have improved their lives through fighting. If promoters were willing to make it safer the sport would once again thrive.

Ninety bucks for an event that could be over in the first round...no thanks!

Perhaps boxing should be organized as a tournament with brackets and seeding, selling subscriptions to the entire season that would cost only slightly more than the final.

Boxing, to me, doesn't seem any more violent than MMA, though I concede it certainly has that "human cock-fight" image. Perhaps weighting (though not too much) points more towards skill and finesse than simply landing heavy blows to an opponent's head would ease some of this bad image.

It really is the sweet science and it would be a shame were to fade away.

I frankly don't care about the money involved in boxing. The bottom line is it is inherently dangerous. When the primary object of the game is hits to the head and the all treasured "knockout", there simply is no justification for this type of "sport" knowing the physiology of impact injuries to the head. The sport should be banned.

Mayweather-Pacquiao will have no lasting effect on boxing's marketability. To become marketable again professional boxing needs to be gutted, redesigned, reconstructed, rebranded, and resold.

Use the MMA model and create "American Fist Fighting Championship." Smaller, MMA style gloves. Remodeled ring. 5, 5 minute rounds. Great fighters compete frequently on a free sports channel, not once every year and a half on overpriced pay per view. Invite the most successful fighters to an annual or biannual championship tournament, pay per view at reasonable rates. No gaudy, silly looking shoes or sequined shorts pulled up to the ribs.

Hire Teddy Atlas, Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler to spread the new gospel of the sport. Although representative of the past, these men come from the only remaining, active generation of ex-boxers and trainers not tainted by today's mediocrity and over-hype. Get rid of multiple sanctioning bodies, needless promoters. Open "fist fighting" gyms where the art is taught (along with other fitness) as a means of exercise, discipline, self defense, and self esteem.

The sport I envision is a brutal one but so is MMA. It sells, that is what the market calls for, and that is what young combat athletes are prepared for, regardless of ethnicity or socio-economics. Look at our MMA fighters. They include college graduates, collegiate wrestlers, ex-military,sons and daughters of professionals and politicians.

What I don't get is all the hand-wringing and angst about concussions in football. Yet here we have boxing, the very purpose of which is to intentionally give your opponent a concussion. People cringe when a football player is carried off the field with a concussion. But people cheer when a boxer is knocked out cold with concussion. Talk about ugly double standards.

It has nothin to do with violence. This is a violence obsessed culture. The problem with boxing are the corruption in the judges scoring (which makes people feel cheated) - and the price of PPV events. Comparing WWE events doesn't make sense. For one thing - it's a drama - it's not real. Second - boxing events don't have all their stars together in one event like WWE.

Are we supposed to lament the demise of two men in a confined space trying to kill each other? Geez, what a puff piece.

The lawsuit by former NFL players had made us more aware of how repeated blows to the head often cause serious brain injuries. This knowledge makes many of us less interested in watching a "sport" where the goal is to hit the opponent's head so hard that he loses consciousness.

How does one write about the demise of prizefighting without mentioning Don King?

Is this the death knell for the sweet science "civilized" fans no longer flock to see? Perhaps not. Violence has been packaged and sold since Roman times. The farm system may be drying up, but there will always be a market for controlled violence. As P.T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born....

This fight would have been awesome five years ago. I couldn't care less now.

Have any of the principals like Bob Arum noticed that a vital element has been missing for some time in boxing - talent, grace, personality. It hardly matters which 'championship' title is which, with the characters involved, and this last exercise was a good example of a fight that seemed like many rounds were videotaped rather than a motivated. A world champion who almost never used his right hand in the entire match?

Boxing now, football within a few decades. These sports are just too hard on the athletes involved, especially their brains. Without a big pool of youngsters getting involved and coming up through the ranks, any sport becomes marginal. Not only because the talent pool gets smaller, but also because when we, or someone is in our circle, has participated in a sport, we understand it better and are far more interested in watching it.

(And hockey will survive only if it changes. Football and boxing can't be practiced in a way that doesn't cause concussions.)

This boxing match will be watched all over the world. Yes it is happening in the USA, but Pacquiao's last two fights were in Macau, which were huge successes. It is certainly possible to turn up one's 'educated nose' to boxing as many Americans have. That is fine and sure boxing is no longer as big a draw in the USA as it once was. But, and there is a huge but, the market and appetite worldwide has never been bigger, and it will be watched worldwide. Is this bout too long in coming, sure, but it is not happening now for the reasons stated in the article. When writing about a fight that has a dramatic impact across an entire nation, and throughout much of Asia, it is a bit odd to act as if this sport and this bout is primarily about and for Americans. You want to keep your nose in the air about those uncivilized peoples who still care about boxing? Well, all it does is re-enforce the perception in much of the world that those in the USA are arrogant and dismissive of others.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Mark Twain. Like wise boxing, especially given the premise, voiced by Mr. Arum that, “Boxing is for poor people who don’t have any other alternative to make their way in life. " And, “We can’t get white middle-class kids into boxing. Let’s be honest: No parent in their right mind is going to let them come to a gym. I wouldn’t let my kid go into boxing.”

Well, the the middle-class in ruins these days and consistently downplayed, there is a strong possibility that the sweet science may be in line for a renaissance. Besides, soccer and lacrosse just...dont...quite...make it, in terms of televised sports. When it comes to viewing on television, boxing parallels golf for the underprivileged or those without a cable or streaming package. Which probably why boxing has returned to ABC.

I am an inveterate boxing fan. When I was a youngster, every boy in my neighborhood knew who the reigning heavy weight, light heavy weight, middle weight, welter weight and light weight champion was. However, my interest in boxing started to fade in the early 1990's when bouts of marginal interest were moved to pay TV. Now, I have no idea who the champion is in any weight class. Greed has destroyed this sport.

The long-term health of boxing is something that we should question wanting to invest in. This is an absolutely brutal sport that leaves its participants different people than they once were due to trauma. The NY Times recently published an article on the evil that is CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), and this is a sport just as dangerous as football for those involved.
UFC, too, is guilty of this, but at least relies on grappling and takedowns not involving straight trauma to the face and head.
WWE has become invested following tragedies such as the death of Chris Benoit and his family to preventing such injuries. They do not permit head shots anymore and wrestlers are regularly evaluated for concussions and any other possible traumas.
It's also not accurate to lump the potential audience of these three sports together--WWE operates under a mostly PG-rating and is geared towards families, so I wouldn't consider it a direct competitor for an extremely violent sport. UFC is a sport that frankly requires much more athleticism than boxing. I know many UFC and WWE fans that consider boxers unskilled compared to the feats wrestlers and MMA fighters accomplish.