![]() The attention was disrespectful to those who’ve dedicated their lives to the sport. One of the ways it’s attempting to regain its audience is by tapping into social media influencers like YouTuber Jake Paul, whose fights from 2020-22 against a retired NBA player (Nate Robinson), a former UFC fighter who specializes in wrestling (Ben Askren) and two past-their-prime former UFC champions (Tyron Woodley and Anderson Silva) created a buzz so large it made traditionalists cringe. That’s why the UFC has grown its brand and passed boxing.” Now, you have some talented fighters - not to the level you had back then, but talented nonetheless - but they don’t fight each other. You had really talented fighters, which you have in any era, but you had a lot of them and they were fighting each other. People knew the fighters back then because network television had matches on Saturday and Sunday afternoons that allowed people to identify with them. “It’s an important fight because, like the ‘80s, when boxing enjoyed a very healthy period, you have fighters meeting while at the top of their games. “How big it is, and how big it winds up being, are two different things,” Atlas says of Spence-Crawford. If the card is able to outdraw one of the biggest boxing matches in years, it will show how much ground boxing has to make up. 2 and 3 contenders in both the lightweight and light heavyweight divisions facing off for another shot at a title, which each of them has held at some point. No titles are on the line, but White’s featured matches have the Nos. On Saturday, UFC 291 will take place at the same time as Spence-Crawford. have been on a collision course for years, but the politics of boxing have delayed a head-to-head bout until now. Terence Crawford (pictured) and Errol Spence Jr. They’ll come around for the big ones, but they’ll drop off in the interim.” The regular fans, the lifeblood of the sport, they get tired of seeing these non-competitive fights. The brand drops a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. But in the meantime, the ratings are going down because the best are not fighting each other. They tell them, ‘Look, we’ve got world champions,’ and everyone is happy. They put them on a diet of one-sided fights, like feeding time at the zoo, and build them up to 15-0, 20-0 and get them to a title fight somewhere, which satisfies their sugar daddy. “The networks sign up their fighters and tell them they will be on TV, which they will, then they have them on a two- or three-year plan where they feed them raw meat and protect them. ![]() “What you have are four or five promoters who each has a talented fighter,” says Teddy Atlas, a respected trainer and commentator. We’ve seen bouts like Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder and Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia in recent years, but it’s been few and far between. And the only way to do that is by consistently giving us what we want, a steady procession of fights that match the best the sport has to offer, without the two-, three- and five-year waits that turn off fans. Grabbing our attention is not the challenge holding it is. It should view this as an opportunity - a starting line, not a finish line. But boxing should not take mass interest in one fight to mean the sport has won back our hearts. ![]() It should be an epic encounter, with a sizable pay-per-view audience. Crawford is 39-0 with 30 knockouts and holds the WBO title. Spence, 28-0 with 22 knockouts, sits atop the IBF, WBA and WBC. They’re in their primes, the best at what they do, and meeting to determine not only who is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, but who will be the first to simultaneously hold all four belts at 147 pounds. I’m not only interested in the showdown but eagerly awaiting it. and Terence Crawford facing off Saturday night in Las Vegas to unify the division’s titles. I thought it would never return, but here we are, with undefeated welterweights Errol Spence Jr. The politics of boxing extinguished the flame that had burned so brightly. Think pay-per-view today.īack then, you could not have convinced me I’d fall out of love with the sweet science, but it happened. Some of his fights were so big they were shown on closed-circuit television in movie theaters. Ali’s gift of gab and lethal jab made him guaranteed box office. The former heavyweight champion’s fights were like Christmas for me.
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