Tonight I went out to a bar to watch UFC 103, which was bad ass, and ran into a friend of mine from school. I asked if he was there to watch the fights and he informed me that he had been trying to find a bar that was showing the Mayweather vs Marquez fight but had no luck. I couldn't believe it.
I live in Waterloo, Ontario which has a population of close to 100,000. This number does not include the roughly 30,000 university and college students that live in the city for 8 months of the year. There are literally over 50 bars in the city and yet none of them were showing one of the biggest fights of 2009. Floyd Maywether couldn't even make it on a TV in Waterloo how sad.
Sad but not surprising. Boxing has fallen so far from the mainstream that it is being beaten consistently by UFC for pay per view buys. Only a few years ago this was unheard of as boxing was the undisputed champ of PPV. However with the rise of mixed martial arts and the lack of marketable superstars boxing has been on a steady decline.
The biggest reason that boxing has struggled is due to the lack of a marketable heavyweight champ. During the 20th century there was no greater athletic distinction than being the Heavyweight champ of the world. Guys like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson were guys you would recognize if you saw them and were major figures in not just the media but in popular culture.
Now the Heavyweight champ is 4 different people. The creditability has been taken from the title. The two Klitschko brothers have heavyweight titles and refuse to fight one another making it impossible to unify the belt. With the heavyweight division now a joke boxing is doomed to fail.
This is a problem the UFC doesn't have. Other than Fedor Emelianenko all of the top heavyweights in the world fight in the UFC. This means that the UFC Heavyweight champ is the best heavyweight, Fedor is a punk and is afraid to fight in the UFC, and that he fights the best competition. Thus the UFC doesn't have a problem with credibility of its champions and thus mixed martial arts doesn't struggle.
The next problem that boxing has is the lack of marketable superstars. The only real BIG names left in boxing are Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquaio, Ricky Hatton, and Oscar De La Hoya. Mayweather couldn't get on TV in Waterloo and Hatton got destroyed by Pacquaio and may no longer be relevant. De La Hoya is also in the twilight of his career and Pacquaio cares more about the Philippines than he does about North America making him hard to market.
The UFC on the other hand does not have this problem. Georges St. Pierre, Brock Lesnar, BJ Penn, Chuck Liddell, and Forrest Griffin are just some of the fighters that have huge endorsement deals and make millions of dollars for the UFC. These are the kind of guys who can sell pay per views on their own.
Boxing used to have superstars that could draw crowds but that is no longer the case. Gone are guys like Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Roy Jones Jr, and Bernard Hopkins. These were all great fighters who would bring out fans and get people interested in boxing. It has gotten to the point that the Mayweather fight tonight wasn't even sold out. Shit the Portland Trailblazers sell out every game and you mean to tell me that a man that is touted as the best pound for pound fighter in the world can't fill an arena?
There are many other factors that have plagued boxing such as greed, corruption, and crooked promoters but these two are the most significant in my opinion. It has gotten so bad that kids no longer want to grow up and be the next Muhammad Ali but would rather be the next GSP or Anderson Silva. That may not sound like a big deal but it is significant.
The sweet science is close to being irrelevant and it is going to take more than SportsIllustrated.com asking celebrities who they think is going to win the save it.
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