The boxing bubble
Reflections on Wood-Conlan brilliance and boxing's ability to be both everywhere and nowhere in 2022
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Preaching to the converted
THE LONG READ
Leigh Wood vs Michae Conlan was objectively one of the most extraordinary fights I have ever seen, with possibly one of the most incredible climaxes of any boxing match ever. Think of a superlative, and this fight lived up to it.
It had everything. A red hot atmosphere, with the crowd split almost 50/50; Conlan looking outstanding and delivering a career-best performance through the early stages of the bout; a Herculean comeback from Wood after being dropped heavily early and being outgunned for much of the fight; one of the wildest 12th rounds you could ever hope for, with Conlan being punched through the ropes to the arena floor as a climax; and some fantastic sportsmanship from Wood, prioritising the well-being of his fallen opponent in his moment of glory.
After a difficult few weeks for the sport (not least due to the Taylor-Catterall scoring controversy and fallout), this was a fine example of how boxing, at its best, can deliver on a level few other sports could hope to come close to.
Wood-Conlan should have been a huge moment for the sport, establishing both as genuine mainstream stars, but in reality, I’m not convinced it was.
The contest was broadcast on DAZN, with the first bell coming at around 11pm UK time. Despite being the boxing highlight of the year so far, many of the people I know who have an interest in the sport simply will not have seen it. Many of my friends who enjoy boxing are no closer than they were a year ago to signing up to the service, and my dad, his mates and many of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic will most likely never be tech-savvy enough to sign up for DAZN without it being available in more places. You can’t access the app through Sky or the like, when you can numerous other streaming services, and as things stand in Britain DAZN is not available in pubs and bars.
The traditional news media, which older generations continue to rely on, didn’t cover the event in as much detail as it could and should have. So many of the potential audience barely knew the fight existed.
This all means that the hardcore fans are really the only ones who will have seen a pretty unforgettable boxing moment.
We are consistently told how happy DAZN are with their business growth, but we are yet to see any numbers to back that up. The most up-to-date numbers in their filings we have seen show considerable losses. Of course, a business will expect losses as they aim to build a long-term profit margin, especially in the media industry, but DAZN really should be looking to explore all possible avenues to push Matchroom’s events and fighters over the top into the mainstream.
Their attempts to buy BT Sport have been gazumped now, meaning a direct line into expanding the reach of their content at scale and speed, in the vital UK market, has hit the skids. DAZN and Matchroom need to come up with new ways to draw more consumers into their product.
Although we don’t have - and perhaps never will have - concrete subscriber numbers for DAZN, we do occasionally get crumbs of information revealed by Hearn and others. This isn’t the raw data, and is not released objectively, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt.
Eddie has stated that upwards of 70% of UK subscribers tuned in to Wood-Conlan, which would denote an engaged user base. What we don’t know is how big that user base is. Hearn has also pontificated that the viewing figures for Wood-Conlan will be higher than those for Queensberry’s Avanesyan-Metz show last weekend, which considering the latter was on a platform (BT Sport) with a far higher potential audience would be cause for some concern with Frank Warren if true. The Lawrence Okolie vs Michal Cieslak show supposedly did very well in Poland for DAZN as well, given the latter’s name value there, but it’s difficult to gauge quite what very well means.
DAZN clearly has been a positive force in boxing overall, and through Matchroom (and, to some extent, Golden Boy) delivers more cards in more countries consistently than anyone else, and the future of the sport is not solely in their hands. DAZN is, in many ways, a boxing fan’s dream come true (leaving the issue of their projected pay-per-view launch aside for the time being). They just need to work out a way to get those who aren’t already deeply invested in boxing to see their best stuff.
Leigh Wood’s next fight looks likely to be against the winner of this weekend’s Kiko Martinez and Josh Warrington showdown, with Matchroom hoping that will be Warrington. It could be a major event in British boxing for sure, but if the card was exposed to a larger audience it could be even bigger, and perhaps even a milestone in DAZN’s development as a platform.
Over in America, it sometimes feels like almost everything half-decent, and even some things which aren’t ($114.98 combined for the privilege of watching just Ortiz-Martin and Thurman-Barrios?!) will be put behind a hugely expensive pay-per-view paywall. The loss of HBO Boxing, which delivered innumerable outstanding fights on ‘regular’ HBO outside of their PPV events, is still felt to this day, not least in the creation of new stars. Showtime and PBC have a decent slate planned for its regular channel this year - not least May’s mouthwatering rematch for undisputed at junior middleweight between Jermell Charlo and Brian Castaño - but HBO has never been fully replaced on the US scene. It’s difficult to see at this stage how it ever will.
We’ve seen in recent weeks some of the newer boxing promotions confirm TV deals on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, there have never been more broadcast platforms on which to watch the sport. How many of those are truly making a difference is absolutely up for debate though.
Way back in the heady days of May 2021, I took a detailed look at the fledgling Wasserman Boxing, run by Kalle and Nisse Sauerland after the powerful Wasserman agency bought out their long-running pan-European Team Sauerland promotion.
When the takeover was confirmed, Kalle stated that they would be making waves, and they have finally now revealed their hand in Britain. Wasserman Boxing will be taking over as the lead boxing partner for UK free-to-air broadcaster Channel 5, which theoretically gives them access to the largest potential audience of any promoter in Britain.
Of course, it’s not that simple and Channel 5’s sporting presence and promotional opportunities pale in comparison to the likes of Sky Sports, plus the channel won’t see boxing as being crucial to their business in the way that other broadcasters will, but it is still a platform for Wasserman to look to build up their roster. Channel 5 has in the past helped launch the careers of the likes of Tyson Fury and Chris Eubank Jr. into the public consciousness. I wouldn’t expect Eubank to fight much on Channel 5 again - the budget is simply not there compared to the likes of Sky, where he will likely remain with the apparent aim of a showdown with Kell Brook for later this year - but this is a good opportunity for their other boxers.
The announced first show for Wasserman’s new TV deal looks decent enough too, headlined by the return of Josh Kelly and a good scrap for the British middleweight title between Linus Udofia and Denzel Bentley…
Given that so many in Britain fell in love with the sport in the days of the likes of Benn-Eubank live on ITV, and the Olympics has succeeded in giving so many big names their break over the years, the idea of boxing remaining relevant on terrestrial TV feels important. Let’s be completely honest though, in its current form it is a nice addition rather than a game-changer, unlikely to move the needle too much on boxing’s consistent relevance for the mainstream audience.
Probellum - the new promotional outfit very much linked to the entirely controversial figure of Daniel Kinahan - have also recently confirmed TV deals on both sides of the Atlantic, starting with their recent Dubai double-header headlined by Sunny Edwards. In Britain and across 62 territories, Discovery Sports will be the home of their shows going forward. Over in the US, they have hooked up with the sports streaming service FuboTV.
Given the size of the Discovery Inc. media conglomerate, you’d think that theoretically Probellum had struck gold. As ever, though, the devil is in the detail, and being stuck behind the Discovery+ app or on Eurosport 2 without any promotion won’t do their cards much good.
Trouble ahead?
Probellum has made their presence known in boxing fairly rapidly in a short space of time. As a company, however, they will surely have questions to answer at some stage. At a time when sports washing of ill-gotten money has finally become the hot topic issue it deserves to be, the fact that Probellum appears to be clearly linked to Daniel Kinahan - who advises many of boxing’s biggest names, including Tyson Fury and Terence Crawford, but has also been alleged to be the head of one of Europe’s biggest drug cartels - feels like it will be a problem (no pun intended) in their future. Not just for the company, but for the sport as a whole.
Given that Probellum has been on a signing spree of fighters linked to MTK Boxing - the management company started in 2012 by Kinahan and Matthew Macklin - and that Kinahan himself was revealed recently to be their representative in a meeting with a Pakistani Sports Minister to discuss opportunities in the region, I think we can be confident in saying that his fingerprints are all over the company. For the time being, however, Probellum are concentrating on establishing their name brand in the sport.
Yes, boxing can still deliver occasional huge events which cross over into the mainstream, but the pool of active fighters able to do that is getting smaller and smaller. Wood vs Conlan could have helped the creation of at least one more, however, it doesn’t feel like Matchroom have been able to capitalise on that momentum yet.
Preaching to the converted will only take Matchroom and DAZN - and the sport more generally - so far.
Just imagine if, after the pretty sizeable online reaction to what was a phenomenal fight, Wood vs Conlan was then shown a day later in primetime on a BBC channel. Or if, before the main event, some of the undercard fights were shown live on a linear broadcaster, even a streaming service such as iPlayer, to entice a larger group to join DAZN for the big fights. Then employ a similar link up in the States too. Now extrapolate that out over the likes of Martinez-Warrington, Buatsi-Richards and Canelo-Bivol, and you will have a hugely valuable additional promotional stream to make more stars and increase subscribers.
Eddie Hearn has stated on numerous occasions that DAZN would be up for a content-sharing arrangement, and thinking outside the box really should be a high priority for a sport that is losing everyday mainstream relevance and stumbling through regular controversies.
It might seem somewhat churlish to say boxing is setting itself up to fail. Canelo is one of the biggest stars in the world, the likes of him, Fury and Joshua are amongst the highest paid too, and Tyson and Dillian are about to contest a world title fight at a sold out Wembley stadium.
It’s also important though to see a clear long-term strategy for how the next big names and moments will be created. There have never been more touchpoints for boxing fans to access the sport, but the sport still needs to get better at giving ways for boxing to cast a wider net and create the next generation of genuine crossover names.
Locking the best of the sport away behind too many paywalls will, in the long run, be counterproductive for the health of the sport. It will be interesting to see how those boxing power players who can effect change rise to the challenge in the coming months and years.
When the sport has so many self-inflicted issues, ensuring that the largest possible audience is aware of those unforgettable moments feels pretty important.
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THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of upcoming highlights of the boxing calendar…
26th March 2022
Kiko Martinez vs Josh Warrington
Promoter: Matchroom | TV: DAZN (UK and US)
Prior to taking on their most recent opponents, you could have got pretty long odds on this being a world title fight headliner in 2022, let alone with Kiko Martinez as the defending champion - but boxing is a funny old game. Kiko rolled back the years with a frankly jaw-dropping knockout of Kid Galahad to claim the IBF featherweight title last November in one of the most memorable upsets of twelve months which was stacked full of them. If the bookmakers are to be believed, he’ll need to pull off another one here.
Josh Warrington, however, has been through a lot in the last couple of years, and has only fought two rounds since he was brutally stopped by Mauricio Lara behind closed doors in February 2021, and that was against Lara in a rematch which was stopped prematurely due to a bad, bloody cut above the eye of the Mexican. He’d also decided to vacate his IBF featherweight title prior to the first Lara fight, stating that he wanted the big fights and the IBF wouldn’t allow him to contest a unification fight. He has the opportunity to put that right against an old foe on Saturday night.
When the pair fought previously back in 2017 at the same Leeds First Direct Arena in which they will face off on Saturday, Josh managed a majority decision victory as he headed towards winning that world title. As champion, he then claimed points wins over the likes of Lee Selby (to raise the title) and Carl Frampton, as well as a controversial decision over Galahad. You have to think that Warrington, with his vociferous fanbase behind him, will be best positioned to win by the same route here, however Kiko has demonstrated that his power (both physical and mental) means he can never be discounted. We also don’t really know what the Lara fight(s) have taken out of Warrington. It feels fascinatingly poised. The undercard includes what is likely to be a lightweight cracker between Maxi Hughes and Ryan Walsh as the chief support, big-punching potential star Dalton Smith in a step up fight, Matchroom’s 1-0 Australian starlet Skye Nicolson, and queen of the weigh-in Ebanie Bridges, who has built up a decent-sized fan base whilst seeming to make a habit of being in exciting fights. With that said, it’s still a demonstration of the lack of depth of talent in the women’s code (especially with four major governing bodies keen for their sanctioning fees) that she is in the second world title fight of her career in just her ninth outing. She challenges Maria Cecilia Roman for the IBF women’s bantamweight belt in a bout which apparently, due to the fact that Warrington and Hughes share the same trainer, will be placed in between the top two fights in the semi-main event spot.
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Richard Riakporhe vs Deion Jumah
Promoter: BOXXER | TV: Sky Sports (UK)
After a very high-profile run of events to kick off their year - Eubank-Williams, Taylor-Catterall and Brook-Khan being objectively the most high-profile run of any British promoter, perhaps worldwide, so far in 2022 - things have been a bit quieter for Sky Sports and BOXXER as we head into Spring. Promoter Ben Shalom has made more headlines recently for his commendably honest interviews than his matchmaking, and has admitted that BOXXER still very much remain a work in progress, but this event still features some potentially intriguing action.
After their original opponents both pulled out through injury, unbeaten Brit cruiserweights Richard Riakporhe and Deion Jumah clash in the main event. Sky clearly see star potential in Riakporhe, and I tend to agree with them, given that he possesses both the skills and marketability to become a household name, and he isn’t too far away from coming into contention for world title shots, now being ranked by three of the four main governing bodies. ‘The Midnight Train’ is also an awesome nickname. Jumah, meanwhile, holds some decent British-level wins but is stepping up in terms of opponent and profile here, so Riakporhe understandably comes in as a large favourite. This is an exciting headliner though.
The undercard features Dan Azeez (who took full advantage of the platform offered by Sky with his excellent win over Hosea Burton in November) making the inaugural defence of his British light heavyweight crown, and there will be appearances from Team GB standout Caroline Dubois and hot prospect brothers Adam and Hassam Azim. So nothing mind-blowing, and there will be those who cast aspersions on the quality of this card, but BOXXER continue to do a decent job of establishing its still-new crop of fighters on Sky.
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2nd April 2022
Savannah Marshall vs Femke Hermans
Promoter: BOXXER | TV: Sky Sports (UK)
One week later, BOXXER and Sky Sports roll into Newcastle with a show which will see the final hurdle for Savannah Marshall as her potential mega-fight with long-time rival Claressa Shields looms in the distance, putting her WBO middleweight title on the line against Belgian Femke Hermans. Although this is a pretty weak main event, it does at least deliver a narrative throughline for the anticipated end goal of Shields-Marshall later this year. Hermans was defeated by Claressa back in 2018 via unanimous decision, so if Savannah can deliver her eighth stoppage in a row that will give more ammunition for the verbal jousting expected in advance of what would be one of the biggest women’s boxing fights ever, and one which also has enormous bad blood flowing between the combatants. In terms of the Hermans fight, however, defeat here for Marshall would be fairly unthinkable.
The undercard for this one demonstrates the pick-and-mix, needs must approach BOXXER are having to employ to fill their early Sky cards, and if I’m honest I am kind of here for of it. Florian Marku (the ticket-selling Albanian welterweight who recently chose BOXXER and Sky over staying with Matchroom and DAZN) against Chris Jenkins (who has a somewhat patchy record but defeated ageing one-time unified light welterweight world champion Julius Indongo in his last outing) is an objectively good domestic scrap; heavyweight Nathan Gorman, signed by Wasserman Boxing last year, has his first fight for over a year; and Aaron Chalmers - former cast member of MTV’s Newcastle party show Geordie Shore and a 5-2 MMA fighter - makes his boxing debut at the age of 34 against an as-yet-unnamed opponent. Random but strangely fascinating.