UK boxing prominence and fan engagement discussed in latest mailbag

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This should have been up on Friday! It wasn’t, but your questions will not go to waste, we’re running it today! The Mailbag will return to regular schedule this coming Friday. From Poppo187: Why does it seem like the UK has a disproportionately loud voice in boxing right now? Is it just that Eddie and Frank have (or, at least, had) the most consistent and coherent stables of fighters for, IDK, maybe a decade? And therefore command a lot of press? Does the English mainstream press cover boxing more, and more effectively, than mainstream US sports press? Are English fighters just currently better at getting publicity (Fury, Itauma, etc.)? America not producing work class talent in the glamor divisions, or when we do they’re irritating little shits? All of the above? Something obvious I’m missing? They’ve had a better amateur system, better promoters, and better fans for a long time now. “Better fans” is a bit of a touchy idea, I suppose what I mean by that is the fans are more consistent and they probably have a larger percentage of fans you would call diehards. And don’t discount at all the degree to which it matters that Hearn and Warren are better promoters who have expanded their operations to promote in America and elsewhere internationally, and also sign a lot of American and other international talent to what used to be pretty much UK-exclusive stables. Whatever else you think about Eddie and Frank, and whatever you might think about the very concept of boxing promoters, they are good boxing promoters, and certainly better than Oscar De La Hoya and the last 15 years or so of Bob Arum. They’ve had better planning, been ahead of the curve more frequently. They are both more focused and frankly smarter than De La Hoya, and on the Arum side of it, look, Arum has gotten old. It happens. Top Rank just isn’t what it used to be, and with Arum about to turn 95 in December, that’s probably not going to change. As for the press, yeah, American mainstream media does not cover boxing. Period. The days when they’d pay it lip service now and again are even pretty much gone. The UK is never going to have it featured over the Premier League on a regular basis or anything, but certainly you see fighters on Sky Sports a lot more than you do on ESPN. The short answer, the TL;dr answer, is simple: They’re better at it over there. Up and down the sheet, they are better at it. From Tommy Morrison fan: Do you have any professional, or amateur, boxing experience? If no, have you ever been in a fistfight? No boxing experience. Where I grew up there was really nowhere to try it out as a kid even if you thought you wanted to do it. I feel like that’s increasingly the case for a lot of American kids, too, and it’s another concern going forward for American boxing. Probably has been for a long time. I don’t know the numbers, but it sure seems like there’s a hell of a lot more boxing gyms where kids can give it a go and see what’s what in the UK than there are in the US. Have been in enough fistfights when younger. Worked a little as a bouncer. But those things are irrelevant to boxing. Boxers and pro fighters of all stripes are just a different breed. Not to say they enjoy being punched, kicked, or whatever else, but they have something in them that makes them ignore “hey, this sucks” to a degree the rest of us generally don’t. It’s not about being able to take a few shots in a bar fight, or even being able to punch hard. I knew plenty of bouncers and other people who have been good at doing one punch. In combat sports, you are being consistently punched or kicked or whatever for quite a while, and the person you’re punching generally isn’t gonna fall over on the first one you land, unless they, too, come into a fight having “pre-gamed” too hard at their buddy’s apartment and now a stiff breeze at the right moment might push them over. It takes a very specific mindset. That’s why when people say that LeBron or Allen Iverson or someone might have been a great boxer in a different era — I mean, maybe. How do they like getting punched? What’s their background like down to the day they were brought home after being born? Just a lot more that goes into it than athletic ability or size or whatever. From bingo762: Tag-team boxing matches…Who says “no” to this? Me. But as everything continues to get worse and stupider I’m sure this will be legitimately promoted at some point before I’m dead. From DKSAB: Everybody talks about big name fights, but do you have any relatively inconsequential fights you want to see? For years I really wanted to see Edgar Berlanga fight Bully Bek even though I doubt it would alter the landscape much. Oh I’ve always had lots of those, and I know exactly what you mean. Like, I would love to see Steve Claggett vs Kurt Scoby, a new one I thought of recently is I’d love to see Hemi Ahio vs Kristian Prenga. Down at bantamweight I’d love to see Antonio Vargas vs Andrew Cain, I just think it’d be a fun fight. And I think it’s important to have a bunch of fights like this that you would want to see, it keeps you a little more balanced as a boxing fan, which is good because being a boxing fan can be very frustrating. Finding things to be interested in and excited about that aren’t just the routinely disappointing “big fights” we get is crucial. From Hurt Business: Which movie boxer would have had the most successful pro career? They’d all have been washed at 26 with the staggering amount of times they’re brutally punched clean. From PaulMFightFan: Why do you think K1/Japanese kickboxing has struggled to gain fans in North America and Western Europe? K1-Max was amazing back in the day? You know, I don’t know. I’ve wondered that before, too. There was a well-reviewed, fairly small movie a few years back set in a bar, and the bar was having a big night because of a PPV fight, but the PPV fight was kickboxing. And it was a good movie, but I kept having the nagging thought that here we have a bar in Texas, and they want me to believe all these people are going out of their minds to see this kickboxing fight at this sports bar? In Texas? Or really anywhere in this country? As compared to boxing, I think it’s just that boxing has been such a big part of the American sports landscape. Obviously that has declined, but boxing was there with baseball as one of the great early spectator sports, pre-dating football or basketball or anything else as a serious attraction. But then you figure, you know, UFC only started a little over 30 years ago, and that took several years to really get a foothold, but they did it. Marketing. Lack of top American talent, and even when there is some they aren’t known here because they don’t really ply their trade here, and they don’t ply their trade here because it isn’t popular here, and it can’t get any more popular because they don’t — it just goes around and around. I will say when I was younger I knew some older boxing fans who just didn’t care of it, even when it might be shown late at night on ESPN2 or whatever. They just didn’t like the kicking being involved. They probably weren’t really purists, but the kicking didn’t appeal to them. Didn’t seem sporting or something, even though obviously it’s just a different sport. But whatever it was, they didn’t like it. From VeryMadMax: Ricky Hatton vs. Josh Taylor, both in their prime, 140lbs. Who do you have? Hatton, which I admit may be sentimental. But Ricky at his very best was just a dog. Pretty much perfect partnership with trainer Billy Graham. I think he either gets Taylor late, just breaks him down with the body work in particular, or he wins a decision that comes mainly from being able to slow Taylor down with that body work. 115-113 type of fight or a late stoppage. All of this with respect to Josh Taylor, who was damn good, and I can fully see why someone would pick him, too. Deeper bag. From Tincan: On the face of it, it’s one of sport’s bigger oddities is that Mexico, with all its boxing tradition, hasn’t one an Olympic gold since the home games of 1968. Why is this? Admittedly I’ve never watched Mexican amateur boxing but one thought I had is that maybe their amateur system already selects for toughness and chin whilst most others are selecting more for ability to point score? This was touched on a bit during Marco Verde’s recent fight on DAZN, and a big thing really is that a lot of the best young talent down there turns professional around age 15 or 16. Mexico has never invested in an amateur boxing program the way other countries have, possibly as a result of that. It would be asking a lot to change the sport’s culture, and a lot of these kids are turning pro because they/their family need the money from it. Mexico absolutely could have a great amateur boxing program. There are plenty of Mexican fighters who are tremendously skilled boxers and don’t overly rely on the stereotyped “Mexican style.” From Boxeobaby: What are your thoughts on 10-10 rounds. do you agree or just stick a pin somewhere for the cleanest punch landed (if any did land that round) This has been my thought for many years, after originally being a “pick a winner, you cowards!” sort: You either need no 10-10 rounds, or quite a few more, and I’m starting to lean heavily toward the latter. 10-10 rounds are rarely scored outside of Europe anyway, but I do think there’s a real use for them. There are a LOT of rounds we see where judges are going 10-9 based on one thing they saw because the rest of the round didn’t have much in it, or any real separation. So that gives someone a vital round of advantage when realistically it was pretty much even. “Well, this one punch was pretty good, so I guess 10-9.” And as things operate, I suppose that’s fair. But it could better if judges were more willing to say a round was even, score it 10-10. It makes winning rounds that much more important, too. You might see some tactical adjustment in boxing, that could result in consistently better fights, where fighters are a little more aggressive. Not reckless, necessarily, but actively trying to truly win more rounds. We’ve all seen fights that get scored 118-110, which doesn’t really reflect the fight, even if it honestly is fair enough and not that hard to say, “Yeah, I thought this fighter won 10 rounds.” The score itself sounds weird because of what we’re used to, but I’ve seen some 118-110 fights that would be more accurately reflected at 118-115. From majordanby: Who are some prospects who you thought for sure would go on to be at least a belt contender, if not a world level fighter, who ended up flaming out? For example, Frankie Gomez comes to mind for me. Oh, Frankie’s definitely one of those for me. Last I heard he just straight up quit, stopped going to the gym, and decided to be a mechanic. Basically nobody involved in boxing has heard from the guy in — wow, a decade. It doesn’t seem that long, but also it does. He and Jose Benavidez were super hyped around the same time, everyone had high hopes for both. Jose had multiple issues, Frankie just didn’t seem to really want it when it came down to it, and that happens. Good for him getting out if that’s what it was. If he just didn’t really want to do it, that is a dangerous way to make your living when you’re going half-hearted. Ricardo Williams Jr always comes up in this sort of discussion. Seemed like he had all the talent in the world, DiBella signed him with a big bonus, but he just did not pan out. Lost his 10th pro fight, and his 12th, went to jail, came back and the opportunities were just gone. Rocky Juarez sometimes comes up here, too, but I think Rocky made a run of it all. He lost fights, yeah, and the world title didn’t come. But he didn’t flame out. He fought very hard and just didn’t make it happen. His first two proper world title fights were both against Marco Antonio Barrera and he lost close. He’d lost close to Humberto Soto, who was a hell of a good fighter at that point. He damn near won a world title again in 2009 against Chris John. It fell apart for him after that, but I wouldn’t call Rocky a bust. I have sort of the same thought about him that I do Christian Laettner being labeled a bust. Laettner was a solid NBA player, he had a 13-year career that had value, it’s not like how Darko stuck around in the league for 10 years and was never very good. Laettner didn’t become a star, but when I think of a bust, I think of guys like Kwame Brown or Marcus Fizer. From CRUCIFILTH: When do you you think we will see Agit Kabayel against one of the other top heavyweights like Dubois, Wardley, Hrgovic, etc? How do you think he does against that group of guys? I think he’ll fare well, and it will inevitably happen. I would guess next year. Dubois has the Wardley rematch in a few weeks, if he wins that I could see a Dubois vs Kabayel unification in the first quarter of 2027. There’s a real chance that Kabayel is the best truly active heavyweight in boxing right now — so not Usyk or Fury — but we’ll have to find out through fights like that. And I hope we do! But I don’t think, even if he were to lose to Dubois or Hrgovic, that it would really be Kabayel being “found out.” For what it’s worth, right now I’d pick Kabayel over either. From Max Wills 2nd: Are there any fights whose outcome you wish you could reverse? Whether because you loved the guy who lost or simply thought the outcome was bad for the division / wider sport? e.g. while it was an historic upset, Ruiz beating Joshua was arguably a terrible result for the heavyweight division. Destroyed the AJ vs Wilder megafight, massively damaged the aura / confidence of the sport’s most marketable fighter (give or take Canelo), and winning basically ended Ruiz’s career. And yes, I also really like AJ. Understandable reasoning. I sometimes wonder what the landscape of boxing would have looked like in the Floyd-dominated PPV years if the judges had shaded to Jose Luis Castillo back in 2002. Mayweather could have rebounded and still been a great fighter, still wound up with a De La Hoya vs Floyd super-fight in 2007, but then again, maybe not? What’s Floyd like with a loss? How much does that take away from the way he very successfully marketed himself? And would he have come back well from it? Some guys never really do, would he have been one of those? Pure speculation of course, but that’s what these ideas are all about. Same sort of thing but with GGG getting one of the nods against Canelo. What’s that big money landscape look like in the years after that? Does it change a lot or not much at all? Canelo had already lost, albeit when he hadn’t yet fully hit his prime years, and GGG was a great, universally-respected fighter, so maybe it just chalks up to “what a great fight,” and GGG becomes bigger but Canelo isn’t really any less a star than he became. From a personal favorites standpoint, I really wish Shane Mosley had beaten Mayweather. It wasn’t to be, and he just wasn’t good enough by then to do it, but I had wanted to see Mosley fight Floyd for a while, and I was just such a big Shane Mosley fan. I mean, I would have lost it. From Blood: I was wondering if a fighter had ever gone up in your estimation for non-boxing reasons? I never liked Conor Benn because of his personality, plus his boxing style, even though I loved his dad. Then I read that he took down Zuffa Boxing’s pants and walked away with their wallet to the tune of $30m for less than 12 rounds of action (10 against Regis Prograis who retired immediately afterwards and 1 and a bit rounds, against Ryan Garcia, who mauled him all the way to hospital). I suddenly thought that looks bad for Dana White and his big claims for Zuffa to be the messiah of boxing. Maybe even Turki Alalshikh is thinking “what have I got myself involved with?” I felt the needle nudge on my approval rating for Conor Benn. Maybe Conor Benn is a secret hero whose career will be all about making various promoters look bad in some way or another. I don’t know if I can think of anyone off the top of my head, but I do suggest watching sit-down style interviewers with boxers, or footage from their camps or the like, on YouTube or whatever outlet or promoter’s social media if you have the time once in a while. You get a lot more of a look at the fighters as human beings, and can lose some of the internet-style harshness that judges their every move while they’re wearing the gloves.