Around what time do you think the mainstream interest in boxing started to fall away?

[JonOli]

Around what time do you think the mainstream interest in boxing started to fall away and what do you think was perhaps the cause?

[Farmboxer]

Depends on what part of the world you are in. Klitschkos sell out, but in America boxing is not so good now, not many fans in seats like Germany.

[brown bomber]

When ****** went to Sky in the 90's. At first the shows were excellent then early 00's it went to shit.

[Grant1]

Sky without a doubt.

Think about it, Boxing was available to 99% of the population when on terrestrial tv, and then it became available to, at a guess, 10% (not many people had sky early 90's).

Boxing lost many casual fans, I remember having to listen to Benn's latter fights on the radio - it was a nightmare.

[doug.ie]

i think it's the amount of titles and champions that have fooked things up...in the past few years, like 21st century years, we have seen people give more credit to ibo, and now we have wba in some cases having 3 world champions, there's a diamond world title now from wbc for catchweights to make things even worse...so i imagine that it belittles any newsworthy story for a tv company that 'a uk boxer is fighting for a world title'...
i'm not making excuses for them, cause i'm sick as fook that i pay a sky sports subscription and see fook all of my favourite sport unless its a ppv, and sick that clinton woods wasnt mentioned more in the media last weekend...
but..it is what it is...depending on how you count them up, you'll be getting 100 world champions soon...and i think thats the main thing thats killing the sport..no proper structure, nobody knows whats what or who's best in a division...so it becomes too hard to follow for the casual sports fan.

[Gaz S]

1995, when Frank ****** signed his exclusive deal with Sky. Back then Sky wasn't as common as it is now and in far fewer homes (and I don't think any of the cable operators such as NTL were that prominent either).
So after Benn's big win against McClellan (the last major fight I recall seeing on terrestrial tv), every major star in British boxing disappeared from our terrestrial screens -Benn, Bruno, Hamed and even the lesser known boxers who were still featured regularly on terrestrial tv such as Steve Robinson, Nicky Piper, Joe Calzaghe (before he became a name) etc.
Sky had already bagged a 10 fight deal with Eubank in '94, and covered most of Lennox Lewis' fights and (at the time) all the major overseas fights. So it was all but gone for the BBC/ITV viewer.
We still had a few Richie Woodhall fights on the BBC and the occasional late night showing of guys like Wayne McCullough on ITV, but nothing that drew the masses the way Benn, Eubank, etc did. I think that's when the majority of mainstream interest started to wane.
All the big events in British boxing just became news reports to most, as they didn't get to see them live or even delayed - Bruno's big title win against McCall, Hamed's crowning victory against Robinson, the Eubank-Collins saga, none of it was shown terrestrially. As I say, this was at a time before digital television and before satellite/cable was as popular as it is now. So it was inevitable - if you're not going to see the fights, you're not going to have as much interest.

[Govanmauler]

When ****** went to Sky in the 90's. At first the shows were excellent then early 00's it went to shit.


Yip thats my shout too , when ****** went to Sky it instantly became a minority sport.

Audley did boxing in the UK a lot of harm but ****** started its downfall

[Chinny]

We can't pretend high profile injuries to the likes of Michael Watson and Gerald Mcclellan had nothing to do with it.

[Govanmauler]

We can't pretend high profile injuries to the likes of Michael Watson and Gerald Mcclellan had nothing to do with it.


true the fact they happened relatively close together was certainly bad for the sport as was the fractioning of the belts and the reluctance to put the best together , but the removal of boxing from terrestial telly is what did it , theres no way round that.

[sidthehat]

Think Harrison/Williams/Skelton can take some blame for their poor fights on ITV. Didnt 7 million watch Harrison-Williams? Not many were still interested in boxing by the time of Froch-Pascal if 2m figure is right.

In addition, earlier the cheapening of world titles had some short term gain, ie making up a title for Eubank-Watson II, but long-term killed the wow factor when mentioning a world title fight especially with WBU fiasco.

Proliferation of titles and possibility of easy route means we have missed out on more big fights over the last two decades than ever before in this country:
Graham-Benn/Eubank, Bruno-Mason, Hatton-Witter, Calzaghe-Froch, Khan-Murray/Thaxton, many welter/middle wars.

[NO MAS]

I think that when it went over to the satalite dishs..... losing boxing on terrestrial was bad...:-(

[slip&counter]

when it left terestrial TV it was downhill from there

even more so in the US, at least there's been the sporadic "big fight" on itv over here

another thing is when Tyson went, he brought the whole US to a standstill, really his fights were like the superbowl, but clearly its the disappearence of terestrial tv thats had the biggest effect, no sport relied on it more then boxing because everything else such as a central authority, proper promoting and management etc are all missing in boxing

[Farmboxer]

PPV is way to expensive. Bad decisions like Malignaggi/Diaz, Don King, etc.

[trotter]

Despite the fact millions tuned in, I don't think there was widespread, in-depth knowledge of boxing 20 years ago.

What you did have were big names, McGuigan, Hamed, Bruno, Benn, Eubank... and they kind of each created the need/appetite for the next star.

You'd still have a fighter like Mason, his fights shown live on BBC, 40-0 record or thereabouts, but his personality meant he wasn't a big name - what I'm saying is that the fighters of yesteryear themselves deserve some credit for being special personalities


But it all boils down to terrestrial coverage I suppose

[Chinny]

No one has mentioned that actually these days terrestrial doesn't guarantee the exposure it once did. What I mean is that nothing ever gets 10m viewers anymore as almost everyone has multi channel in some form.
Viewing is much more fractured than it once was when everyone watched the same thing.

ITV4 reaches tens of millions of homes for example.

It isn't the move from terrestrial alone :deal

[trotter]

No one has mentioned that actually these days terrestrial doesn't guarantee the exposure it once did. What I mean is that nothing ever gets 10m viewers anymore as almost everyone has multi channel in some form.
Viewing is much more fractured than it once was when everyone watched the same thing.

ITV4 reaches tens of millions of homes for example.

It isn't the move from terrestrial alone :deal

Good point, back in McGuigan's day you had 3 channels to pick from

No wonder every bugger tuned in on a saturday night !!

[UKFightFan]

Two factors:
1) When ITV stopped showing live boxing. When try did the big fights were accessible to all and therefore were watched by large audiences
2) As the better boxers get paid more and more money the interest in them dwindles. By this I mean, you need the best fighting the best on a regular basis. Now fighters do not fight frequently enough and they cherry pick their opponents thus robbing the public of frequently completitive fights.