Latest Rocky Film Shows How Much Boxing Has Fallen from Good Times

As I came out the movie theater the other day after watching Stallone's new Rocky movie, I thought to myself, is boxing even entertaining anymore to the American public? The answer is a resounding "no." The majority of the American public including myself can no longer even name a single boxer and the newspapers no longer even cover the sport of boxing in the sports section. Boxing has truly fallen on hard times. Even the movie Cinderella man which starred Russel Crowe which I enjoyed was not seen by the majority of people because people no longer care about boxing. It has not become an entertaining sport.

Even boxing fights at Madison Square Garden in New York which use to sell out for every fight with at least 15,000 people will be lucky to get a third of that size to any given fight. Maybe it is the lack of promotion for the sport of boxing or maybe like in the newest Rocky movie, there is a lack of good fighters and boxing matches. For any boxer nowadays that is undefeated, he either has been untested or not given enough publicity or no one really cares about him.

Boxing use to be an American sport that people watched on weekends. Now that spot is being filled more and more by sports fans watching baseball, football, basketball and to a lesser extent, hockey. Boxing has even fallen lower than hockey on the sports totem poll. Boxing is no longer televised by any major network and viewers who want to watch boxing often have to watch the pay per view channels. People hate paying more money to their already expensive cable bill and it makes no sense to pay more money to see two nobodies fight against each other. For the price of pay per view boxing and the lowering ticket prices because of a lack of people showing up, it is simply easier to see the fight live since it isn't likely to sell out anyway.

The boxers Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis had a little bit of excitement in their fights and matches and some people came to watch them. However, since the decline of their careers and their retirement, no boxer has taken their place and it is unlikely that anyone will anytime soon. Boxing needs a fighter like Mohamed Ali to step up and captivate the nation.

Even on the radio, stations no longer carry fights because there isn't enough of a demand and stations lose money by having radio broadcasts of the fight. Boxing is scrambling to find a solution to raise public awareness and get boxing to its once glorious peak in sports.