Another brick in the paywall
YouTubers, exhibitions and pay-per-view - boxing has a distribution problem
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Boxing’s unstable platforms
THE LONG READ
Just two weeks ago, Josh Taylor became the first British fighter since Lennox Lewis - and the first of the four-belt era - to be crowned the undisputed champion of a boxing weight class.
He did this by overcoming fellow undefeated and unified world champion Jose Ramirez on 22nd May in Nevada’s new (and distinctly un-glamorous-sounding) Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, to become the reigning junior welterweight king. In a back-and-forth tussle that lived up to the expectations of fans and pundits alike, ‘The Tartan Tornado’ delivered the bout’s decisive blows in rounds six and seven, with a pair of knockdowns which proved pivotal. Ramirez survived and even came back strongly in the championship rounds, but Taylor held firm in the end.
The three judges all agreed on 114-112 for Josh Taylor. Without the knockdowns, it would have been a draw - but the result was all that mattered in the end. Scotland, and Britain, had a new undisputed champion of the world.
Such a momentous achievement happens very rarely in this most frustrating of sports, with only four other male holders of all four major world championships simultaneously (IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO) having been crowned in the current era.
An undisputed title fight should be a celebratory moment for boxing, and for British boxing this particular one held enormous sporting significance.
Living in the UK however, you would have been forgiven for barely being aware it was taking place. Taylor’s moment of glory was hidden away in his homeland, available via pay-per-view on FITE TV - the home of Triller Fight Club events and independent wrestling shows, mainly - after not being picked up by the major British broadcasters.
Even in the United States, where the fight was available for viewers on ESPN, a basic cable channel, many complained that there had been a distinct lack of hype or pre-fight buzz built up for this rare occasion and a contest of such stellar characteristics. Promoter Top Rank seemed to drop the ball dramatically, something which Eddie Hearn was quick to publicly agree with when he called their marketing campaign for the bout “criminal”.
Only days before Taylor-Ramirez, while the promotion for the undisputed world title fight was stuttering to a conclusion, 3-0 novice and YouTube celebrity Jake Paul signed a deal for his future fights to be broadcast on Showtime, one of the true long-standing staple TV platforms for boxing in America. Showtime has been showcasing the sport uninterrupted since 1986, outlasting HBO Boxing and providing a platform for many of the biggest names and finest fights in the sport’s great history. They are now the home of Jake Paul.
Although Jake hasn’t fought a recognised boxer yet and has summarily achieved nothing in the sport, he has become the poster boy for the ever-growing new generation of celebrity boxers and exhibition events that have begun to flood the market. Whether it’s YouTubers vs TikTokers introduced by Michael Buffer, Aaron Carter fighting former NBA player Lamar Odom with Chuck Liddell as the referee, or two former World’s Strongest Man winners giving boxing a go, it seems like everyone is at it these days.
Paul has long held a large presence across social media, but his persona has now absolutely permeated into the mainstream. He’s been headlining Triller Fight Clubs, garnering enormous attention and claiming to have drawn astronomical, unverified pay-per-view numbers. Showtime has clearly seen enough corroborated purchase data to fancy a piece of that pie.
Perhaps they were drawn in by the prospect of making the one we’re all really waiting for...Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury.
Jake is set to make his Showtime bow in August against yet another MMA guy, Tyron Woodley, a 39-year-old former UFC welterweight champion who is making his professional boxing debut. Unlike Ben Askren, the former Disney actor’s previous opponent, Woodley can punch, but he is not a boxer. The fact that a fight such as this is being authenticated as a headliner by an established boxing force such as Showtime is a concern and lends unwanted credence to the whole celebrity boxing bandwagon.
Showtime will also be jumping on board the gravy train to offer retired Floyd Mayweather’s eight-round boxing exhibition against Jake’s brother Logan Paul on pay-per-view this weekend - a fight which Floyd himself has this week equated to a “legalised bank robbery”. Logan has an official pro boxing record of 0-1, but he has grossed huge figures fighting fellow YouTuber and boxing novice KSI in recent whilst becoming one of the most recognised young celebrities in the world, and therefore is now going up against the greatest boxer of his generation. If we had to go this route, Floyd should surely be fighting KSI, considering he got the decision in his rematch with Logan in November 2019.
Showtime was the home of Mayweather at the end of his glittering career after they invested a reported $600 million to sign him away from HBO. But by offering the event, which Mayweather himself has made clear is a blatant cash grab, they are detracting by association from any other pay-per-view boxing events they choose to carry in the future. Their barometer for quality is broken.
Showtime is certainly giving this one the full promo treatment, in the style of their long-running All Access series. Once utilised to build towards some genuinely great fights, the template now delivers WWE-style hype for the latest boxing exhibition...
In the UK, Sky Sports - who seemingly had no interest in showing a British fighter’s undisputed conquest just a couple of weeks ago - have snapped up the rights to make ‘Money vs The Maverick’ available via Sky Box Office for £16.95 a pop. Sky also carried Logan Paul-KSI II, so the decision probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. It will be fascinating to see which direction they now go given the news of Matchroom leaving them for DAZN in the UK, and how their budget for boxing will be spent.
If mainstream broadcasters who are supposedly dedicated to boxing are selling their credibility off whilst not supporting an undisputed title fight though, what does the long-term future really hold for the sport on TV?
You might say that’s just business, the bottom line of boxing’s open market in action - and I absolutely understand that. The companies which own platforms like Showtime (ViacomCBS) and Sky (Comcast) are massive, multi-multi-billion dollar corporate entities. They exist to make money, and this appears to be a considerable new revenue stream. Boxing has always had an element of the absurd about it, and I’ve written previously of the chaos of the fight game before, and how I’ve often begrudgingly accepted that at least it’s very rarely boring.
Jake and Logan clearly have an effective distribution model in place for their promotional message via a variety of new media platforms. This appears to have brought a different, younger audience to boxing, an audience who at this stage it’s unclear will or won’t stay with the sport long term. This could be a fad that dies out for them, or it might not.
It does feel though that we are on shaky, unproven ground. Celebrity boxing used to be something Ricky Gervais did for charity, now it’s headlining major pay-per-view events.
The flagrant disregard for the reputation of the sport from its major broadcasting custodians for short-term gain is at a level we have not seen before, especially when it is at the expense of delivering promotion for a true undisputed boxing event. It feels like the TV companies are playing a dangerous game with the concept of boxing as a genuine sporting endeavour.
There are some proper boxing fights on the Mayweather-Paul undercard - even if Jean Pascal testing positive for multiple performance-enhancing drugs has cancelled his intriguing rematch with Badou Jack and robbed the event of its most interesting fight. Unlike some of Triller’s output so far, the majority of the show features experienced, trained boxers, but the main event is clearly not up to much.
For their part, Triller seems to have used their split from Jake Paul as an opportunity to claim the moral high ground, with boss Ryan Kavanaugh recently stating that “we’ve got to keep the boxing purists or there’s the danger we fizzle out. And we ain’t going nowhere! I think we’ll set new records this year.” Whether they can do that with an audience of boxing purists alone is certainly debatable.
The new Triller era begins in a couple of weeks with a show headlined by Teofimo Lopez’s mandatory title defence against George Kambosos - a fight which most are not particularly enthused by but they paid a huge amount for the right to promote - and bolstered by a supporting card involving uninspiring legitimate boxing matches featuring the likes of Michael Hunter, Zhang Zhilei and Jono Carroll.
Their hiring of legendary HBO Boxing announcer Jim Lampley this week to call Triller events going forward seems like a step in the right direction. They have also been trying to make a fight between Oscar De La Hoya against George St Pierre though, so the funfair hasn’t quite left Triller town yet.
Josh Taylor’s undisputed title fight ended up on FITE in the UK. Surely it would have been possible for Top Rank (or MTK, his management company, who have a far greater understanding of the British market) to have attempted to do more, even if it was merely post-event highlights on a channel with larger potential reach. Taylor himself did not hold back in his criticism of the broadcasters’ decision…
“It has pissed me off a bit. It seems the broadcasters back home don’t care about it. This is a massive fight. It would be one of the greatest British boxing victories in recent history. But no broadcaster is here to cover it. They seem more interested in a circus like Paul against Mayweather – that’s not a real fight. It diminishes the sport. You have one of the all-time greats competing in a circus for money. It baffles me why broadcasters haven’t picked my fight up.”
Without the right platforms in place to ensure something like this doesn’t happen for a comparably major fight in the future, the best the sport has to offer will invariably be tragically underexposed. Even though many of the big clashes still aren’t being made, meaningful fights seem to be happening pretty much every weekend now the new boxing season has really kicked in. Beyond the boxing cognoscenti, how much attention is all this action really getting?
The rise of YouTube fighters has highlighted that boxing, despite a glut of talent, honestly doesn’t have that many genuine superstars. The sport’s head honchos have done a pretty poor job of establishing the new generation over recent years. Although it is in everyone’s interest to produce more, there are too many disparate and clashing personal interests to allow the streamlined process which would easily facilitate their creation - and it is within this vacuum that the non-fighters like the Paul brothers have hoovered up so much money and media attention.
This is the crux of the issue boxing currently faces. It shouldn’t have to be either-or. Exhibitions featuring big names (however athletically questionable they might be) will invariably draw considerable attention, and often huge revenue, but major broadcasters are not doing enough to simultaneously highlight the truly outstanding contests which the sport has to offer. Boxing needs to decipher a way for this to be done in unison or it risks burying itself even further into the underground as a niche sporting obsession. Media partners playing fast and loose with the concept of what justifies a major boxing event is certainly not helpful.
This all speaks to a fundamental discord between the fabric of what makes boxing the greatest sport in the world and the broadcasters whose platforms expose the sport to the world and make it financially viable at the top level. Boxing is making an exhibition of itself - you wonder where exactly it will end.
THE BOXING AGENDA
Quick thoughts on the boxing newswire…
This past weekend saw two world title fight winners at the opposite points of their career paths and with conflicting states of public opinion. In California, Nonito Donaire’s life-affirming WBC bantamweight title victory at the age of 38, stopping Nordine Oubaali in the fourth round, saw him become one of a select few fighters who have won world titles in three different decades. With universal acclaim for his achievement across the boxing world, Donaire’s next aim is to force a rematch with Naoya Inoue after they shared a world-class war in the final of the bantamweight World Boxing Super Series in November 2019. At the other end of the spectrum, 22-year-old Devin ‘The Dream’ Haney - the WBC lightweight champion - boxed beautifully for nine rounds of his defence against veteran former three-weight world champ Jorge Linares in Las Vegas. Buzzed hard by Linares in the tenth, however, Haney smothered his opponent for the remainder of the bout and did not engage. This saw him receive a hostile crowd reception when his win (unanimous with the judges) was announced, and he has faced a lot of unfair criticism in the post-fight analysis. Objectively, I thought the Linares scalp was a good win, and the best of his career so far, and at such a young age he is still very much a work in progress. Clearly, Haney does not help himself with comments about being ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd reincarnated and the like. The fact that he was elevated to the WBC champ without winning the title in the ring still grates with some, even though that decision was not his doing and he finds himself in the position of ‘champion in training’. Haney is becoming one of boxing’s de rigueur villains, but at such a young age and having demonstrated sublime skills at times the future is an exciting one for him still. Perhaps public opinion will sway another way for Devin in the future, it does sometimes have a tendency to do just that…
If only boxing had more fighters like Manny Pacquiao. The 42-year-old legend, an EIGHT-division world champion across his incredible career, has been seeing his name linked with numerous fighters in and around the welterweight division for the last year-or-so, ever since he stirringly defeated Keith Thurman to win the WBA (Super) welterweight crown in the summer of 2019. Ryan Garcia spuriously announced a fight with 'PacMan’ on his Instagram earlier this year, Mikey Garcia has been constantly lobbying for a chance at hitting the Pacquiao jackpot, and there have been persistent stories about negotiations for a bout against WBO welterweight champ Terence Crawford. Out of the blue though, it has now been confirmed that Manny will take on a fearsome test against Errol Spence Jr, the WBC and IBF welterweight champion, in Las Vegas this August. Pacquiao will have to navigate height, weight, reach and age disadvantages to ‘The Truth’, but he has not shied away from fighting against the odds in the past and will relish this surprise opportunity. For Spence, this is a crossroads fight against one of the greatest, and most famous, boxers of all time, and an opportunity to take his own stardom to the next level. There are clear parallels with Pacquiao’s own career-making win over Oscar De La Hoya back in 2008, a victory which cemented his status and sent ‘The Golden Boy’ into retirement…
Eddie Hearn wants to turn Matchroom into the UFC of boxing - this is something which he has been extremely open about. Following the dream Matchroom scenario, fight fans of the future will really just need to subscribe to DAZN to watch the vast majority of major boxing events. That dream came a bit closer to reality this week when it was finally confirmed that his boxing outfit would be leaving Sky in the UK to sign a long-mooted five-year global deal with DAZN. All very straightforward. Hearn’s inability to make Anthony Joshua-Tyson Fury a reality however brings into sharp focus just how difficult a boxing ‘takeover’ (not Teofimo) will be to achieve. He has been vociferous in his anger after the collapse of the undisputed heavyweight title mega-fight at such a late stage, having worked so hard to deliver it, seemingly on his own. There is validity to much of his criticism of the Fury side’s action, but it was also naive of him to constantly publicly state that the fight announcement was imminent when he and his partners didn’t hold all the cards. He has been powerless as the boxing world has watched it fall apart. The old guard promotional establishment involved in making Fury’s trilogy fight with Deontay Wilder (Bob Arum and Frank Warren on the Fury side, Al Haymon and PBC with Wilder) have shown no remorse. The fact that Fury-Wilder III has been signed, sealed and delivered in a matter of days does lend credence to the conspiracy theories currently doing the rounds that this was the plan of Top Rank all along. Whether through circumstance or design, Eddie Hearn has been left with egg on his face by the stalwarts of the fight game. Have we now potentially lost Joshua-Fury for the undisputed title forever? Fury-Wilder III is confirmed, whereas Anthony’s mandatory defence against Oleksandr Usyk hangs in the balance somewhat, with vacating the WBO crown and going another route a real possibility for Team AJ. We may end up with an undisputed heavyweight title fight at the end of the year as planned, but there’s every chance we won’t.
THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of upcoming boxing calendar highlights…
5th June 2021
Daniel Dubois vs Bogdan Dinu
Promoter: Frank Warren / TV: BT Sport (UK)
Quite ridiculously, this is for the WBA ‘Interim’ heavyweight title. Dinu should be nowhere near this high in their rankings, and ‘Dynamite’ is coming off a high-profile defeat to Joe Joyce back in November. So just ignore the trinket - it’s not a world title fight, whatever the WBA might tell you. What it is though, is a well-timed clash for Dubois, against an opponent whose only defeats are Kubrat Pulev and (a presumably ‘roided-up at the time) Jarrell Miller. Dinu should give him some rounds, without offering up much of a live threat of victory. Dubois enters the ring for the first time under trainer Shane McGuigan, who he has only been with for a few weeks, as he (rather randomly) makes a new start in Telford, of all places. I’ve been pretty vocal in the past about the fact that I think Shane is Britain’s finest active trainer, someone who did a phenomenal job not just with the likes of Josh Taylor and Carl Frampton, but also took Lawrence Okolie from unfancied borefest-merchant to feared and thrilling cruiserweight world champion. Dubois faced fierce, unfair criticism for “quitting” against Joyce when he took a knee in round 10 after suffering medial and orbital floor fractures and retinal bleeding, but that action seems to have summarily saved his career. It is always uncertain when fighters return after injuries such as the one he suffered, but it also makes for a more fascinating spectacle. The undercard - featuring Nathan Heaney, Tommy Fury and other Frank Warren prospects almost universally facing opponents with losing records - is one of the worst I can remember from a mainstream British promoter.
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6th June 2021
Floyd Mayweather vs Logan Paul
Promoter: Mayweather Promotions / TV: Sky Sports Box Office (UK); Showtime pay-per-view (US)
I’ve talked a lot about this fight a lot already, which is being held at the cavernous Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. So let’s explore the undercard, featuring mainly fighters from under the Mayweather banner. It was a real shame to lose Jean Pascal vs Badou Jack II, which was the standout contest on the show. Jack ‘The Ripper’ - who has an inconsistent recent record but invariably delivers fights worth watching, and was preparing for a war with Pascal - appears to have a last-minute replacement in the form of Dervin Colina, a fighter I have neither seen nor heard of before. The card still has the return of former junior middleweight world champion Jarrett Hurd, fighting at the 160-pound middleweight limit. His opponent, Luis Arias, hasn’t won a fight since 2017, but his record includes a 2018 draw with Gabriel Rosado and he was once pretty highly regarded. 43-year-old ex-NFL player Chad Johnson will also make his boxing debut, but that’s the extent of the non-pro input. So the undercard, while far from being a classic, does mainly feature genuine boxers, at different points in their fight game journeys. Could have been much worse I guess.