Fight Forum - MMA - UFC - Boxing - K1 - EliteXC - View Single Post - Accurate viewpoint on the state of boxing

Gygax · 10-19-2007, 12:47 PM

Recently during an interview conducted by Sam Caplan with new IFL COO and President Jay Larkin, the subject of the current state of boxing came up. Larkin was a longtime Showtime Boxing executive and producer. He has been key is completing negotiations setting up fights like the Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson, Ricky Hatton vs. Kostya Tszyu, and Joe Calzaghe vs. Jeff Lacy fights. He recently set up the Mikkel Kessler vs Joe Calzaghe fight before joining the IFL. Thus the man really knows the ins and outs of the boxing including the political aspects. So I really think is comments on the state of boxing are relevant.

Quote:

Sam Caplan: I wanted to ask you about boxing because you have such a long history with you. You've touched on all the politicals and alluded to some of the ways in which boxing has shot itself in the foot. There's critics out there that say boxing is dead. Do you feel that there's any chance that boxing can return to its former levels of popularity?

Jay Larkin: No. I don't think it can ever return to its former levels of popularity because the world has changed in so many ways. You talk about the glory years of boxing and you're talking about the 30's, 40's, and 50's and then the renaniassnce of the late-70's and 80's when you had amazing activity from lightweight to middleweight with the Ray Leonards of the world, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Haglers, (Roberto) Durans, that was a brilliant renaniassance of boxing.

There are many reasons why boxing is no longer anywhere near the popular mainstream sport that it was. Part of that reason was the unavailablity to broadcast on network television, the price of the fight, so many fights migrating moving to pay-per-view, and there are a lot of reasons why. The fanbase has also changed and the demographic has aged for boxing.

In short, I don't think boxing can ever be what it was but I do believe it can be a very healthy sport. I think the reports of boxing's demise have been greatly exaggerated. A lot of people are making a lot of money in boxing. I'm not just talking about the aberrations of a De La Hoya/Mayweather. There are a lot of guys fighting and there's a lot of TV coverage, albeit not network (as) the TV coverage is primarily basic cable, premium cable, and pay-per-view. Now, if boxing were suddenly to come back to NBC or ABC or CBS, you would see a huge uptick in the popularity of boxing.

Also, boxing has a lot to do with socio-economics and the fighters. Don't forget in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, even 70's, talented African-American athletes had very limited choices. You became a fighter. Very few were lucky enough to get into the NFL and the NBA. Thankfully, that's changed a great deal and more and more kids in the inner cities are going to college, which wasn't the case in the glory years of boxing when boxing was a way out of the ghetto. Boxing was a way of survival. So a lot of those talented guys who could be the great heavyweights of our era, who could be the Muhammad Alis and the Joe Fraziers of our era, have decided very intelligently not to get their heads beaten in for a living and have gone to college and gone on to careers outside of sports. They've gone on to careers in law, medicine, and every possible field of endeavor that you could imagine whereas 30 years ago, 20 years ago their choices were a lot more limited.

The fighters we're seeing now, there's been a huge influx of Latinos and now we're seeing a tremendous influx of Eastern Europeans. Boxing has traditionaly followed socio-economic trends of the world. There was the great Irish period of boxing when you had Irish immigrants coming over here by the boatload looking for a better life. Then they were followed by the Jewish and Italian fighters who were doing the same thing. Then they were followed by the African-Americans coming up from the south. Now you're looking at Latinos and Eastern Europeans. Boxing is a sport probably more than any other sport that is tied into the socio-economics of a society.

Sam Caplan: I don't mean to get off the subject but hearing you talk about boxing is fascinating. I was a big fan growing up and remember that my first exposure to it was on network television. It seemed like boxing was on CBS and ABC every other weekend. Why hasn't anyone in the boxing community tried to make that push to get back on free TV? I look at a fight like Kelly Pavlik vs. Jermain Taylor; Taylor doesn't have the most exciting fighting style but Pavlik is a brawler and seems like a guy that could be a crowd favorite but the mainstream doesn't know about him. Would it kill boxing to try and go to a major network and say "Hey, we're going to give you this match for free in order to try and build some new stars and bring in some new fans and try to appeal to a younger audience."

Jay Larkin: Well, that's a great point of view and I can assure you that every promoter I know has tried to do that. And you're right; you use a good example, Taylor/Pavlik would have been a great ABC fight in its day. But the networks don't want boxing to touch their ad pool. They have a specific amount of money that they apply to different events, whether it's MLB, NBA, or whatever it may be, they put the money towards those events. One of the reasons is because boxing is unreliable. You don't know whether you're getting 12 rounds or 30 seconds of one round and they have to make good on those commercial commitments to the sponsors whether they have one round or 12 rounds. So it's unreliable and television networks don't like unreliability. They want to know how long a show is going to run. They know how many quarters a football game has and they know how many innings a baseball game has. Boxing is too indefinite for them and they don't like it for that reason.

Also, boxing has had its scandals and a lot of them don't want to be touched by scandal. There's a lot of reasons why the networks shy away from it. Now, any of the networks, and most of the networks I know, would be happy to carry boxing as a time buy. Meaning that the promoter would buy the actual hour and a half or two hours on that network and then try to make their money back by selling sponsorship. But they don't want to go into their pool and spend the money on boxing. So even if you go to NBC, ABC, or CBS and offer them Taylor vs. Pavlik for free, odds are they're not going to take it. They're not going to displace something else for it.