3w ago

You ever get the feeling that boxing is the one major sport that has gone backwards badly?

Other sports like soccer, football even basketball has advanced with sports science and nutrition. You see track and field records get broken. Swimming as well. NFL combine you see more 300 lbs athletes run ridiculous 40s and you see more and more db, wr, rb etc run sub 4.3 40s. Strength sports you see a record broken every other week.

I don't feel that with boxing. Too much cherry picking and underhanded tactics around. Even Canelo who I rate highly has pulled off shady shit like doping in the GGG rematch. Fucking tyson fury heavyweight champ at the time getting embarrassed by ngannou who has never boxed professionally mma champ or not. (Thank goodness for usyk showing what a real boxing champion looks like). Boxers like crawford, charlo, brooks, mikey garcia, constantly jumping up two weights for terrible fights that mostly turn into mismatches. Pacquiao at his age being fast tracked to a title shot with barrios which derailed the undisputed talks. Jake paul being ranked 14 at cruiserweiht after Chavez who never won at cruiser, Mike tyson who was damn near 60 with a myriad of health problems.

Then there is the fact that boxing in the Olympics is being removed due to too much corruption in AIBA. The talent pool in boxing was dire before its gonna be much worse. Most people don't wanna be punched in the head so it shouldn't be surprising that its dire. Sport ain't gonna die but good lord its in a terrible state outside of the lower weights like Inoue weight and lower. Once that Riyad season honeymoon period goes away its gonna be long.

39 comments

I feel like something your post is leaving out about boxing is how we fairly recently (last decade?) learned about CTE, how fucking scary it is, and how boxing puts you at a very high risk for it.
Long term I don't really see how the sport survives in its current form
- Any full contact combat sport that allows blows to the head - the public knowledge that suffering a single knockout permanently damages the brain should've shut this shit down, or at least merited a total rethinking of how combat sports should work.
  
  I completely agree with you. If I had children I would firmly refuse to let them do boxing or tackle football. Unfortunately, overwhelming evidence of direct harm seems to not be enough for many people to ban these sports
  
  The Shaolin Monks had the right idea. A martial art you can keep doing until you're elderly minimizing long term injuries.
  
  I just saw a headline the other day that said in soccer there’s “no safe amount” of heading the ball
- Yeah and the in ring deaths we've seen. They seen IV rehydration removed and that made things riskier. The way dadashev died was brutal. They reduced the rounds from those hundreds of rounds to 15 back then. Then from 15 to 12. It doesn't matter the human body is not meant to take shots to the head
- brain damage has always been an obvious risk of boxing. the participants were usually under no illusion there. we used to call old boxers “punchy” and now we use a more scientific term.
  it’s a poor man’s sport but the opportunities have dwindled as a result of promoter fragmentation, the lack of (free) televising, and rise of other safer or more popular sports. outside of the top few, you’re fighting for peanuts. so i reckon those who’d ever given it a shot have their sights elsewhere, even mma.
  i miss the good-old days of well-matched world-class talent but we’ll never see it again. and that’s probably a good thing. my entertainment is not worth the hurt and exploitation.
- Boxing was actually safer when it was bare knuckle. The gloves just let people punch more.
  
  This is true. When you had to worry about breaking your hand, you couldn't transfer as much momentum into your opponent's skull, which is what bruises the brain
- OP forgot
Must be bad if the IOC is calling them corrupt
- I first knew it was dodgy when roy jones lost the Olympics final. That was the worst robbery I've ever seen in amateurs.
I think the presence of carnies like Dana White, Rogan and the other man-o-sphere types combining politics with combat sports as a way to appeal to a fragile demographic is setting an example for any combat sport, entertainment wrestling as well.
- You always see Kadyrov sportswashing things by hanging with many fighters. He has an... Odd thing with combat sports
I think all sports that require repeated concussions should be banned.
it's not just boxing, the ufc also picked up a lot of brainworms after conor mcgregor came along. it's all superfights and champs ditching belts after one or none defenses, and they ditched their USADA program and its kind of widely accepted that PEDs are tacitly allowed if you keep up appearances and dont pop on the tests (there are arguments for PEDs in combat sports for recovery but the UFC is shady as hell). OTOH the org does fuck all to promote fighters bc they dont want another fighter with negotating power the way mcgregor had so theyre not actually pulling in big views. Not to mention things like jon jones' sitting on the heavyweight title and refusing to fight tom aspinall. Everyone wants to be a pro wrestling heel but the only one who was ever good at it was chael sonnen. Luckily there are guys like Pantoja, aspinall, etc, who are keeping the brand alive despite the ufc's best efforts. I haven't kept up with the sport of mma much outside of the ufc for a while so maybe the grass is greener. it's not all bad ofc but the brand is obnoxious and tacky, dana white is a clown, and I despise joe rogan. Whatever. Pride never die!
- And the ngannou split once again bought up fighter unionisation. Couture went hard for fighter unionisation. There was too much brainworms for that to ever get going. Kiss ass company men chuds like Michael chandler will go out of their way to fuck it up You think a spot that parades trump around gives a shit with its lousy pay? Fighters in boxing will laugh at the deals dana blight will bring up. And you aren't lying about the ufc as a brand good lord it is garbage. Almost every fighter is a manchild except the Dagestan guys and the heavyweights and hell.. The way jon jones sat on the heavyweight title just to retire like that and hold up the division is disgraceful. Pereira was liked because he fought a ton and hell he may even move to heavyweight. To be honest he has the power and frame to do it although at heavyweight no one's chin is safe from those 4oz gloves
as a titbit boxing is the sport in my country that is the most notoriously mixed up with gang crime
- Ireland? The kinnehans?
  
  you got it lol
Combat sports in general feel like they're in a strange place. Like, boxing and MMA seem simultaneously bigger and more popular than they've been in a while (which I attribute to the various high-profile celebrity boxing matches as well as hard times generally creating interest in fighting), but the general quality is just the drizzling shits right now.
I'm way more of an MMA viewer than a boxing viewer, but it seems like various combat sports "promotions" don't actually do a lot of promoting of their fights and fighters. I've thought this for a while now, but it's so pronounced at this point. UFC's Dana White clearly doesn't give a fuck anymore, most fighters have been expected to get themselves out there with self-promotion for years now. I don't understand why they aren't pushing the hell out of people like Aspinall and Pantoja and especially Topuria.
As far as the future trajectory, I think it's only going to get worse, especially in heavier weight classes where they have to compete with stick-and-ball sports for talent (the only way they could compete is by paying way more, and fuck no they won't do that).
Most of the joy I derive from combat sports right now is going back and watching old stuff, learning about fighters I wasn't around for, etc.
- Good lord the quality is bad. Ufc took a page out of boxing's playbook and makes up these goofy interim titles that hold up the fights. I cannot for the life of me understand why aspinall isn't pushed. Hes the fastest MMA heavyweight since fedor and probably the most complete package since prime Cain. You're right its gonna get worse in the heavyweights. A lot of these heavies seem like blown up lightheavy/middleweights. its bare bones over there. There aren't many people that big to begin with so you can imagine. And there is even less people that size that are athletic. Heavyweight decline has been brutal and thats the marquee division.

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