Next Time Someone Says Boxing is Dying Send them these FACTS that Prove the Opposite

By Travis “Novel” Fleming

Below, are ten reasons why boxing is alive, and well, and actually experiencing it’s biggest surge in popularity in over twenty years. This is boxing’s biggest year in a longtime, and the future looks as bright as ever. Throughout history, boxing has always had golden eras in which boxing popularity increases, followed by lulls in between where it loses steam, only to see it pick up again in the next golden age. After the recent lull, we are now entering the beginning of boxing’s latest golden era.

Next time you hear someone say the ridiculously uneducated statement “boxing is dead”, after you smack some sense into them, you can hit them with these ten irrefutable facts to counter their nonsense and send them back to clown college with their tales between their legs.

1. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Manny Pacquiao just did at least 4.4 million Pay Per View sales. This makes it by far the highest selling PPV ever for anything, and it was the most expensive PPV in history. If boxing were dead or dying, then what made 4.4 million people pay $100 to watch a boxing fight? Why aren’t UFC and wrestling events even doing a fifth of those buys at a much cheaper price? Why did it shatter the records of previous Mayweather and Pacquiao fights, as well as triple the PPV sales numbers from the days when people claim boxing was alive and well with Mike Tyson as its biggest attraction? If boxing is dying now, then it must have been on life support when Tyson was on top, only doing a fraction of the number of PPV sales that were generated from Mayweather vs Pacquiao, despite Tyson’s PPV’s being half the cost to watch. On the list of the highest selling PPV events ever from boxing, wrestling, and UFC, why does the sport that uneducated people claim is “dying” take up all of the top five spots over UFC and wrestling? 4.4 million is just the preliminary number, it could be as high as 5 million, when all is said and done. To put this into perspective, here are the top PPV events for UFC, wrestling, and boxing. Notice that even the fifth best selling boxing PPV crushes the very best from the UFC and wrestling.

Top UFC PPV ever- Brock Lesnar vs Frank Mir: 1.6 million
Top Wrestling PPV ever- Wrestlemania XXVIII: 1.25 million
Top 5 Boxing PPV’s ever-
1. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Manny Pacquaio: 4.4 million
2. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Saul “Canelo” Alvarez: 2.2 million
3. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Oscar De La Hoya: 2.15 million
4. Mike Tyson vs Lennox Lewis: 2 million
5. Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield 2.19 million

2. Boxing’s return to major network tv on a regular basis. With Al Haymon’s “Premiere Boxing Champions” series, boxing is once again being broadcasted to the average sports fan for free on NBC and CBS, extending its reach further than it has in many years. More people are getting the chance to watch boxing than ever before, and they are getting champion level fights for absolutely free. This push is leading to mainstream coverage that will help restore boxing back to the sport of choice for many casual sports fans, who never had the chance to flick through the channels on a Saturday afternoon and happen upon a championship fight. It will never be up there with baseball and football as America’s most followed sport like it was in the 1940’s, but with the emergence of PBC, within a couple of years there’s a great chance of it achieving a higher level popularity than other niche sports like golf, NASCAR, tennis, and perhaps even hockey.

PBC has featured some excellent champions so far, and its last two cards are sure to have captured the interest of anyone who happened to catch them while channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon, because they had three all out wars, and fight of the year candidates, with Jaime McDonnell vs Tomoki Kameda, Ricky Burns vs Omar Figueroa, and Andre Dirrell vs James Degale. These are the types of battles that turn first time, or casual, viewers into returning viewers. Anyone who saw these cards will be sure to tune in the next time they see boxing in their program guide, adding to its growing fan base. Al Haymon has done a great job so far of delivering interesting style match ups that make for exciting brawls to lure in the casual sports fan, while also peppering his PBC cards with bigger names, and elite championship fighters, like Danny Garcia, Adrien Broner, Adonis Stevenson, Amir Khan, Keith Thurman, and more. He’s building a following for all of his top dogs, and future top dogs, that will see new fans get behind them to follow their next steps.

3. On May 9th, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs James Kirkland was the highest viewed cable card in almost 10 years! It averaged 2.14 million views, making it the most watched cable fight since 2006 when Bernard Hopkins vs Antonio Tarver did 2.4 million views in a bout that was of a high enough quality to warrant pay per view, while Canelo vs Kirkland was a mere tune up for Alvarez. Not only were the ratings impressive, but the fight was a brutal one with the Mexican superstar Alvarez scoring a nasty, eye catching, knockout of the year candidate over the menacing looking Kirkland.

4. The return of excitement in the heavyweight division. It has been said that as the heavyweight division goes, so does boxing. Heavyweight is boxing’s glamor division, producing it’s most world famous fighters. The average sports fan is much more intrigued by a battle between giants that can destroy any ordinary man on earth than they are by a skilled duel between fighters that don’t even measure up to their chests. Ever since Lennox Lewis retired, the division has been in a slump and void of worthy contenders to challenge the heirs to Lewis’ throne, the Klitschko brothers- Wladimir and Vitali. Since Vitali retired, it has been all Wladimir dominating the embarrassingly beer bellied, sub-par, opposition at heavyweight. On top of having no worthy challengers, Wlad has a very effective, yet boring style for a man of his stature. He is the ultimate professional and always comes to the ring in top physical form, so he deserves credit for working harder than his contemporaries, however, he fights in a safety first approach that consists of jabbing and holding until an opponent is worn out and ready to drop from a flick of a finger, before ending things with his harpoon right hand.

He has turned off a lot of fans because they see a man with his build, and brutal power, and expect him to go out and destroy his overmatched and undersized opponents early, of which he is very capable, instead of hiding behind the jab all night and fighting like he’s afraid to get hit. Luckily, after a decade of heavyweights that were either not good enough, or didn’t train hard enough, several serious contenders have emerged, and a changing of the guard seems to be in order. Klitschko is almost 40, looked worse than ever in his last outing, and appears to be there for the taking. The big men waiting in the wings all possess a more fan friendly style that ought to catapult the new king to crossover, worldwide, superstardom like the devastating heavyweight champions of the past. Deontay Wilder brought a heavyweight championship back to America for the first time in a decade and although he is flawed, he is exactly what the casuals want after the long boring domination of the Klitschko brothers. Fans have longed for an American champ, and not only that, but a heavyweight champ that goes for the kill. At 33-0 with 32 KO’s (the longest KO streak in Heavyweight history), the 6’7″, menacing looking Deontay Wilder fits the bill. It remains to be seen if Deontay can dethrone Wlad but, in the meantime, he has given the heavyweight division a major spark, gotten it North American TV play, and has gotten people genuinely excited about the division for the first time in ages. If he beats Klitschko, he will become the most celebrated heavyweight since Tyson and it would do wonders for boxing’s popularity.

Alexander Povetkin has recently returned with a vengeance and destroyed three top heavyweights by brutal knockout, he is set to face Wilder later this year in a mouth watering clash of power punchers with the winner being the most logical opponent for Klitschko. First Klitschko must get by the 6’9″ Tyson Fury, which will be no easy task in his old age with his skills declining. A fight between the winner of Wilder vs Povetkin and the winner of Klitschko vs Fury would be for all four major world titles at heavyweight and would be the biggest heavyweight fight since Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson. Look for this to go down in early 2016, and do wonders for boxing’s popularity. There are also some excellent young fighters at heavyweight that have great potential to be rulers in this new era of competitiveness, former British Olympic gold medalist Anthony Joshua being the stand out of those that are still in the prospect stage. Either way you look at it, heavyweight is coming back with competitive fights, exciting styles and more than just one top tier fighter, like it was during the Klitschko era. It doesn’t hurt to have popular champions representing America and the UK either.

5. Miguel Cotto vs Saul “Canelo” Alvarez have an agreement to fight later this year, should Cotto beat Daniel Geale on June 6. We already got the biggest fight in boxing earlier this year, we look to be on the way to the biggest heavyweight fight in 15 years by early next year, so how crazy is it that there’s also a great chance for the second biggest fight in boxing to go down later this year? Cotto vs Canelo is the only fight in boxing that doesn’t involve Mayweather or Pacquiao that can generate over a million PPV sales. It’s a monstrous fight between two immensely popular warriors that are the faces of boxing in their proud, boxing crazed, home countries. It’s another battle in the long standing rivalry of Mexico vs Puerto Rico. The good news is that with their styles, they are sure to deliver a fight that will leave even the most cynical of casual fans satisfied. It’s hard for many casual fans to fully understand and appreciate the technical brilliance of a Floyd Mayweather Jr or Andre Ward, Canelo and Cotto will not present that challenge, it will be guaranteed fireworks.

6. Young, hungry fighters battling it out to become the stars of the sport in the post Mayweather vs Pacquiao era. For over a decade, the names Mayweather and Pacquiao have been synonymous with boxing, with no more than a couple fights left for each man, it’s time for new stars to emerge and carry the sport like Oscar De La Hoya before them, Julio Cesar Chavez before him, Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Muhammad Ali, Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey etc… Who will emerge as the newest superstars with crossover appeal? Who will be recognized as the best found for pound? Keep in mind, the best aren’t always the most beloved. Some names to get excited about include: Terrence Crawford, Vasyl Lomachenko, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Nicholas Walters, Deontay Wilder, Anthony Joshua, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, Andre Ward, Sergey Kovalev, Roman Gonzalez, Naoya Inoue, Kell Brook, Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan, and Adrien Broner.

7. Know nots, and MMA fans (not all if you, the thick-headed ones), will have you believe that boxing is declining and dying, while UFC is the future. The truth is that boxing has, always was, and will continue to be a far bigger draw than MMA. And in fact, since 2009, UFC PPV buys have been steadily falling, while boxing’s have been steadily rising, so it’s not even a valid argument that MMA is gaining ground on boxing in terms of popularity, it’s actually losing ground, and getting left in the dust. In fact, out of the top ten highest selling PPV’s, nine are from boxing, while the only UFC event that’s in there is when former WWE wrestler Brock Lesnar fought Frank Mir, which was more of a short lived circus freak attraction. The average PPV sales for the top five boxing fights is 2.53 million, against an average of 1.18 million for the top five UFC events. Even if you take Mayweather vs Pacquiao’s 4.4 million sales out of the equation, boxing is still crushing the UFC with its next five highest selling bouts averaging 2.06 million.

To put it simply, you would need to add the totals from the five highest grossing UFC events just to surpass the sales of the one highest grossing boxing event. The UFC enjoyed a brief surge in popularity and curiosity, but boxing remained on top, even during the UFC’s best years, and is now steadily crushing the UFC in popularity with every big fight, proving that after the initial curiosity into the world of cage fighting that fans worldwide have realized that boxing is still the number one form of hand to hand combat. Cage fighting might have initially peaked the interest of the extreme crowd with low attention spans, but the tried and true sweet science of pugilism still reigns supreme, and isn’t even a close comparison. It’s great to see that the general public is wise enough to choose substance over flash, and skill over brutality. Below, are the top five selling UFC PPV’s of all time, and the top five selling boxing PPV’s of all time.

Top five selling UFC events:

1. Brock Lesnar vs Frank Mir: 1.6 million
2. Brock Lesnar vs Shane Carwin: 1.1 million
3. Georges St. Pierre vs Nick Diaz: 1.1 million
4. Chuck Lidell vs Tito Ortiz 2: 1.05 million
5. Brock Lesnar vs Cain Velasquez: 1.05 million
Average of all five: 1.18 million

Top five selling boxing cards:

1. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Manny Pacquaio: 4.4 million
2. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Saul “Canelo” Alvarez: 2.2 million
3. Floyd Mayweather, JR. vs Oscar De La Hoya: 2.15 million
4. Mike Tyson vs Lennox Lewis: 2 million
5. Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield 2: 1.9 million
Average of all five: 2.53
Average excluding Mayweather vs Pacquiao: 2.06

8. Two boxers are the highest paid athletes on earth, by a country mile. If boxing is “dying”, then why is the highest paid boxer earning nearly five times as much money in one year as the highest paid athlete from every other sport? Mayweather is sitting at #1 with a cool $250 million, Manny Pacquiao is at #2 with $150 million, while soccer superstar Lionel Messi is at #3 with $56.3 million. Mayweather still has another fight in September that will see his total for the year ring in at over $300 million, which is nearly six times that of the highest paid athlete who isn’t a boxer. Going through the list, there isn’t even one UFC fighter in the top 50, which is down right criminal when you consider the risk involved. It’s a shame what Dana White pays these guys. He must pocket an enormous amount of cash for himself, because boxers who do over a million pay per view buys for a single fight can earn upwards of 20 million dollars for their efforts, while the few UFC cards that have gotten over a million buys have seen their main attractions earn less than 600 thousand dollars, literally thirty times less than a boxer who’s PPV sells at the same rate. Below are the top five highest paid athletes in the world.

1. Floyd Mayweather- boxer- $250 million
2. Manny Pacquiao- boxer- $150 million
3. Lionel Messi- soccer player- $56.3 million
4. Cristiano Ronaldo- soccer player- $50.2 million
5. Sebastian Vettel- Formula 1 driver- $50 million

9. Boxing is being broadcasted on more TV stations than ever before. From the mid 1990’s until this year, you had to be rich enough to afford premium cable networks in order to watch high level boxing. By being confined to premium cable networks like HBO and ShowTime, boxing really limited its audience and cast aside the average joe who doesn’t feel like forking out 18 bucks a month to get a fight once every few weeks. By signing on with major networks like NBC and CBS for multiple shows, boxing is once again reaching the casual sports fan at no cost like every other major sport, and it will breed a whole new generation of fight fans who don’t need to come from a privileged family that can afford premium cable just to watch boxing on TV. As mentioned, previous to this year it was pretty much all HBO and ShowTime for boxing, with the occasional lower level card on ESPN or Fox Sports. This year, boxing is featured regularly, or set to be featured regularly on NBC, CBS, ABC, HBO, ShowTime, Spike, BET, Tru TV, Fox Sports, CBS Sports Network, ESPN, Bounce TV, and more…

10. The Russians are coming! And a lot more Cubans too! By “Russian” I am being very general, I actually mean the former Soviet Union comprising of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and several other countries that have a history of boxing in their region. The Russian boxing school is a strong one, that under the Soviet Union was not allowed to test its mettle in the professional ranks. In December of 1991, the world witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, while handing over its powers, including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes, to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Since then, athletes from the former Soviet Union have invaded the sport of ice hockey, producing some of the biggest stars of the NHL. They have also sporadically made appearances in professional boxing, with impressive results via the likes of Yuri Arbachakov, Kostya Tszyu, Wladimir Klitschko, Vitali Klitschko, Serhiy Dzinziruk, Orzubek Nazarov, Vassily Jirov, and more.

Nowadays they’re coming over in record numbers, and they’re about as powerful as they come. They’re great for the sport, and they’re already contributing a massive amount of talent that’s only going to snowball going forward, creating a whole new incredible pool of talent. Already, we’re being blessed with some of boxing’s most exciting fighters like Sergey Kovalev, Gennady Golovkin, Ruslan Provodnikov, Alexander Povetkin, Denis Lebedev, Artur Beterbiev, Evgeny Gradovich, and more. There are also more and more Cubans taking the risk of defecting in order to pursue professional glory. For many years, Cubans have not been allowed to turn professional, despite handfuls escaping to do so, but the Cuban boxing school is perhaps the best in the world, dominating the amateur ranks.

With a population of only 11 million, Cuba has as much boxing talent as boxing countries with ten times its population. They have produced great champions such as Jose Napoles, Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilan, Joel Casamayor, Benny Paret and many more. The latest era of Cubans has also given us some excellent champions like Guillermo Rigondeaux, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Erislandy Lara, Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Richar Abril, and Rances Barthelemy. With a new age ushering in friendly relations between the USA and Cuba in the post Castro era, it’s only a matter of time before Cubans are allowed to become professional fighters, and the best boxing country per capita on earth is allowed to truly show its unbelievable talents on the professional stage.

Sound like a “dying” sport to you? I’d like to know how these people come up with this nonsense, while conveniently ignoring the facts that state just the opposite. Boxing is doing just fine, my friends.

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