Remember back in 2017 when boxing “purists” went apoplectic with rage and tinkled their collective panties when a retired Floyd Mayweather fought UFC star Conor McGregor in a “real” sanctioned boxing match?
How about the nipple-twisting self-righteous indignation last November when influencer/promoter/novice boxer Jake Paul fought Mike Tyson in the first-ever live boxing event on Netflix?
“They’re ruining boxing” laments were tossed about like compliments to Turki Alalshikh in any regular issue of the New Era, Saudi-owned Ring Magazine.
The critics were not necessarily wrong about gimmick matches fucking with the structure of the sport and degrading the legitimacy of the competitive narrative. They were just targeting the wrong people and wrong events.
What’s really messing with boxing right now are the multiple gimmick matches passing for real fights while stalling entire divisions, like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford in September and the rumored Jaron Ennis vs. Teofimo Lopez bout.
Mayweather, McGregor, Paul, and Tyson fighting in cash grabs took nothing away from the sport. They were peripheral events that did not impact anything going on in the “real” competitive boxing world. It’s not like any of them were skipping over better, more legitimate fights to go after one another.
Alvarez, Crawford, Ennis, and Lopez, however, ARE key fighters holding key spots atop key divisions.
Alvarez-Crawford, for example, is keeping both fighters from better, more significant bouts within their own divisions– bouts which would contribute much more to the well-being of the sport than a one-off novelty event. As on-paper interesting as Canelo-Bud might be, Canelo-David Benavidez is even more interesting and infinitely more logical to the narrative of the super middleweight division. The much-deserving Benavidez had to move up to light heavyweight for lack of a path to undisputed 168 lb. champ, Canelo.
With Canelo-Benavidez locked in, that would’ve pushed Crawford into a spot where he’d be facing Jaron Ennis in a more logical and big-picture meaningful bout—in his own weight class– at 147 or 154. Bud-Boots is the biggest, best bout to make at 147-154 and it would serve as either an affirmation of Crawford’s greatness or as the kind of passing of the torch moment that is way too uncommon these days.
Canelo and Crawford fighting in their own divisions would mean that Teofimo Lopez keeps fighting in his own 140 lb. class, where the opponent options range from Devin Haney to Gary Antuanne Russell.
Clusterfuck-invasive gimmick matchmaking goes beyond Canelo-Crawford and Ennis-Lopez, though.
How about Manny Pacquiao vs. Mario Barrios holding the WBC welterweight title hostage?
Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Conor Benn produced a lot of drama, but the catchweight fight, itself, was meaningless, serving no big-picture purpose beyond tickling nostalgia to produce impulse pay-per-view buys. Boxing, as a whole, would be better served if both were making moves within their own divisions.
Even something like Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, from that May 2 Times Square debacle, could be considered a gimmick match since they were competing for a “vacant” WBA welterweight title (that isn’t actually vacant) without having actually competed at welterweight.
For those keeping track, these gimmicked encounters are stalling the natural flow of key divisions to the US scene (168, 154/147, and 140) as everybody below the top dogs waits through the cash grabs for opportunities that may or may not even come.
(And, no, I’m not even considering Jake Paul-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in any of this. What serious fight from either are we missing by having them fight one another?)
The reason for these gimmick fights is simple. It’s money, duh. But, specifically, they’re a way to cheat the natural order of boxing things and artificially create money-making “super” fights without doing the hard work of actually building organic blockbusters.
Turki Alalshikh and the Saudis have not generated the kind of revenue they had hoped for from their boxing endeavors and they’ve failed miserably in trying to reach US audiences. Turki’s fantasy world matchmaking reeks of desperation, giving off the vibe of someone assembling fantasy matchups culled from social media comments to make nothing but quick money scores. It’s almost as if Turki and the Saudis aren’t really interested in long-term building as much as they are in attaining immediate control. Hmmmmm.
Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), meanwhile, is also reeking of desperation with their Pacquiao-Barrios pairing. Handcuffed by having so few shows and a star in Gervonta Davis, who frequently seems depressingly indifferent to the sport, they’re trying to fabricate something big, pumping a Pacquiao well that may have already been tapped dry.
And all of this nonsense, of course, is behind pay-per-view paywalls.
Boxing has always been different from other sports. You can’t really run boxing as you would run the NBA. But the narrative structure of all sports has a common element– work your way through pretenders, contenders, and elite until you win the championship.
Boxing is knocking away that last vestige of sporting logic with this latest wave of gimmick fights.
It’s almost as if the NBA, plagued by lagging viewership, decided to skip the playoff process and just have the two most popular teams in the largest markets play for the championship three weeks into the season.
In some cases, such trickery might work. But only in the short-term. This is the equivalent of a farmer harvesting too much, too frequently without planting crops for the future. Stars can’t be made if they can’t be built. And they can’t be built if there’s no path to a passing of the torch and no viable road to establishing true star power.
So, what can be done about this? What can be done to nudge boxing back on to the right track, where they build to fights rather than mix and match existing name-value opponents like a video game?
Honestly, maybe nothing.
Boxing may be so far Human Centipeded into its own worst instincts and self-destructive strategies that only a full collapse and subsequent rebuild would help. In great part, structurally, the sport isn’t even built in such a way as to facilitate organic rivalries and long-term sport-building narratives anymore.
Like a whore who’s been pimped out too many times, boxing has now turned to fetish fulfillment to pay the bills. There’s usually no going back from that dark road.
Notes from the Boxing Underground: Welcome to the Era of Gimmick Boxing
Remember back in 2017 when boxing “purists” went apoplectic with rage and tinkled their collective panties when a retired Floyd Mayweather fought UFC star Conor McGregor in a “real” sanctioned boxing match?
How about the nipple-twisting self-righteous indignation last November when influencer/promoter/novice boxer Jake Paul fought Mike Tyson in the first-ever live boxing event on Netflix?
“They’re ruining boxing” laments were tossed about like compliments to Turki Alalshikh in any regular issue of the New Era, Saudi-owned Ring Magazine.
The critics were not necessarily wrong about gimmick matches fucking with the structure of the sport and degrading the legitimacy of the competitive narrative. They were just targeting the wrong people and wrong events.
What’s really messing with boxing right now are the multiple gimmick matches passing for real fights while stalling entire divisions, like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford in September and the rumored Jaron Ennis vs. Teofimo Lopez bout.
Mayweather, McGregor, Paul, and Tyson fighting in cash grabs took nothing away from the sport. They were peripheral events that did not impact anything going on in the “real” competitive boxing world. It’s not like any of them were skipping over better, more legitimate fights to go after one another.
Alvarez, Crawford, Ennis, and Lopez, however, ARE key fighters holding key spots atop key divisions.
Alvarez-Crawford, for example, is keeping both fighters from better, more significant bouts within their own divisions– bouts which would contribute much more to the well-being of the sport than a one-off novelty event. As on-paper interesting as Canelo-Bud might be, Canelo-David Benavidez is even more interesting and infinitely more logical to the narrative of the super middleweight division. The much-deserving Benavidez had to move up to light heavyweight for lack of a path to undisputed 168 lb. champ, Canelo.
With Canelo-Benavidez locked in, that would’ve pushed Crawford into a spot where he’d be facing Jaron Ennis in a more logical and big-picture meaningful bout—in his own weight class– at 147 or 154. Bud-Boots is the biggest, best bout to make at 147-154 and it would serve as either an affirmation of Crawford’s greatness or as the kind of passing of the torch moment that is way too uncommon these days.
Canelo and Crawford fighting in their own divisions would mean that Teofimo Lopez keeps fighting in his own 140 lb. class, where the opponent options range from Devin Haney to Gary Antuanne Russell.
Clusterfuck-invasive gimmick matchmaking goes beyond Canelo-Crawford and Ennis-Lopez, though.
How about Manny Pacquiao vs. Mario Barrios holding the WBC welterweight title hostage?
Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Conor Benn produced a lot of drama, but the catchweight fight, itself, was meaningless, serving no big-picture purpose beyond tickling nostalgia to produce impulse pay-per-view buys. Boxing, as a whole, would be better served if both were making moves within their own divisions.
Even something like Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, from that May 2 Times Square debacle, could be considered a gimmick match since they were competing for a “vacant” WBA welterweight title (that isn’t actually vacant) without having actually competed at welterweight.
For those keeping track, these gimmicked encounters are stalling the natural flow of key divisions to the US scene (168, 154/147, and 140) as everybody below the top dogs waits through the cash grabs for opportunities that may or may not even come.
(And, no, I’m not even considering Jake Paul-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in any of this. What serious fight from either are we missing by having them fight one another?)
The reason for these gimmick fights is simple. It’s money, duh. But, specifically, they’re a way to cheat the natural order of boxing things and artificially create money-making “super” fights without doing the hard work of actually building organic blockbusters.
Turki Alalshikh and the Saudis have not generated the kind of revenue they had hoped for from their boxing endeavors and they’ve failed miserably in trying to reach US audiences. Turki’s fantasy world matchmaking reeks of desperation, giving off the vibe of someone assembling fantasy matchups culled from social media comments to make nothing but quick money scores. It’s almost as if Turki and the Saudis aren’t really interested in long-term building as much as they are in attaining immediate control. Hmmmmm.
Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), meanwhile, is also reeking of desperation with their Pacquiao-Barrios pairing. Handcuffed by having so few shows and a star in Gervonta Davis, who frequently seems depressingly indifferent to the sport, they’re trying to fabricate something big, pumping a Pacquiao well that may have already been tapped dry.
And all of this nonsense, of course, is behind pay-per-view paywalls.
Boxing has always been different from other sports. You can’t really run boxing as you would run the NBA. But the narrative structure of all sports has a common element– work your way through pretenders, contenders, and elite until you win the championship.
Boxing is knocking away that last vestige of sporting logic with this latest wave of gimmick fights.
It’s almost as if the NBA, plagued by lagging viewership, decided to skip the playoff process and just have the two most popular teams in the largest markets play for the championship three weeks into the season.
In some cases, such trickery might work. But only in the short-term. This is the equivalent of a farmer harvesting too much, too frequently without planting crops for the future. Stars can’t be made if they can’t be built. And they can’t be built if there’s no path to a passing of the torch and no viable road to establishing true star power.
So, what can be done about this? What can be done to nudge boxing back on to the right track, where they build to fights rather than mix and match existing name-value opponents like a video game?
Honestly, maybe nothing.
Boxing may be so far Human Centipeded into its own worst instincts and self-destructive strategies that only a full collapse and subsequent rebuild would help. In great part, structurally, the sport isn’t even built in such a way as to facilitate organic rivalries and long-term sport-building narratives anymore.
Like a whore who’s been pimped out too many times, boxing has now turned to fetish fulfillment to pay the bills. There’s usually no going back from that dark road.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com
