What is Happening to the Sport of Boxing?

The sport of boxing has changed a lot over the past 10 to 15 years or so. The sport is a lot less popular now than it once was. Most dedicated fans of the sport will not disagree. What happened? Is it due to the rise of mixed martial arts? Is it due to the lack of exciting fighters or fights? Is it due to the fact that the heavyweight division is a lot less competitive than lower weight classes? Maybe it's a combination of all of the above. Let's take a closer look.

Mixed martial arts has definitely made its presence felt in the world of sports over the past few years. How would this effect the sport of boxing? Most people view mixed martial arts as real fighting. The injuries are much more severe, the knockouts are much more devastating, and the competition is clearly more even than in the sport of boxing. When someone pays to see a fight, they want to see action. People don't pay their money to see to fighters dancing around each other. They pay to see fighters engage. The sport of boxing is clearly lacking intense fighters. These days there are very few, and the ones the sport of boxing does have, avoid fighting each other. This is one of the reasons why boxing has become less popular.

Fights in the sport of boxing just aren't as exciting as they were in the days of old. Fighters respect each other and that's great, but nowadays boxers show each other way too much respect leading up to a fight. Fighters have pre-fight press conferences, which is where they're supposed to be promoting their fights and making people want to buy tickets and pay-per-view. But people don't want to see two guys fight that are constantly saying that they think the other guy is a great fighter and a great person, but they're going to knock them out. People want to see fighters fight that don't like each other, and aren't afraid to make it known to the whole world. Floyd Mayweather Jr. seems to have been the last of this kind of fighter. The other reason why the sport of boxing is less popular is because the top of fighters of a weight class are not competing against each other. There just aren't enough, Leonard vs Hearns, Ali vs Frasier, Holyfield vs Bowe type fights to keep boxing on top of the popularity chain.

One argument you'll often hear is that the popularity has slowed down due to the lack of great fighters or competition, in the heavyweight division. Though this isn't fair to lower weight classes with great fighters still competing, there is still some truth to that. A lot more attention goes to the middleweight, welterweight, and lightweight classes now. Obviously this makes no difference to true fight fans, but everyone who buys a ticket and pay-per-view to see a fight is not a true fight fan. Boxing is an old sport that will always be around but in order to stay popular in this ever-changing world of ours, some adjustments will need to be made.

Lastly, I want to point out that the public's new lack of interest in the sport of boxing has a lot to do with the inaccurate judging, that has been going on much more in the past few years, than in the whole history of the sport. Maybe the boxing commissions need to start hiring some younger judges or just better judges. Too many times, do we see a fight handed over to a fighter who clearly lost the bout. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to pay my money to see a fighter get beat up, only to see him get the victory handed over to him due to poor judging.