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No matter how you look at it, boxing events simply don’t hold the attraction for most sports bettors they used to. In the great and rich history of the sport, one hundred, fifty, even 20 years in the past, big-time boxing events were always big draws. In fact, heavy weight title bouts were often the some of the biggest events of the year. The world champion boxers were household names and everyone had all the big boxing events marked on their calendars. In today’s society those images sound like they’re from an imaginary place. If you were to ask ten people walking down the street today, I would seriously doubt if even one of them could tell you who the world heavyweight champion was. Furthermore, I bet they would be hard pressed to tell you the last time they even watched a boxing event. And for people under the age of twenty-five, well, they may have never even seen a boxing event in their life and likely never will.
With so many possible variables affecting the decline of boxing events in our society it’s difficult to pinpoint just one factor. There is always the decline of the personalities in boxing, or the lack of stars argument that many people feel is to blame for the lack of interest in boxing events in today’s society, but for me the most important reason why boxing events are longer the great draw they once were is because there are so many other sports to chose from nowadays, that boxing simply lacks the excitement of football, basketball, NASCAR and dare I say, even golf is more interesting to watch than some present day boxing events.
It’s certainly a far departure of the hey-day of boxing when nothing topped the wide spread of boxing events, nothing in sports certainly, and almost nothing outside of sports either, save for a war of some other catastrophic event. Instead of playing at a sold out Madison Square Garden or sold out outdoor stadiums, boxing events now play to Indian casino crowds, and small arenas that seat a few thousand people. Part of this has to do with better broadcast technology and services, but at the core is a simple lack of interest in boxing events as compared to history.
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