...if you visit any boxing forum in the world you are almost certainly going to run into a number of "fan types" who are more fans of a certain fighter (or fighters) than they are of the sport. Whilst it's not a bad thing to be a fan of a fighter by any means (we all have our favourites) the fact they seem to care more about their fighter than the rest of the sport concerns me.
Boxing lives on it's "star attractions" the big names such as Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Sadly over the past few years the number of star attractions has dwindled to only a handful of names a drastic difference to the 1990's when we had Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, Roy Jones Jr, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr, Lennox Lewis, Prince Naseem Hamed and Sugar Shane Mosley to name just a few.
This is where the issue lies, the fans of fighters are almost cultist in their beliefs. For example Pacquiao fans are Pacquiao fans first, boxing fans second (if at all), when Pacquiao retires those fans will, on the vast part, retire with him. Likewise Mayweather fans will stop watching when Mayweather eventually turns his back on the sport. Then what?
The people watching our sport on an annual basis in the US is about to shrink, massively. When Mayweather and Pacquiao hang up their gloves their isn't likely to be someone ready to step into their shoes. Of course there is Canelo Alvarez who is being primed to take over their role but yet is completely unproven at Pay-Per View level, ditto Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
Sadly when the fan base shrinks the TV slots will shrink, the money for fighters will become more limited and the opportunity for new break out fighters will diminish. Thankfully however we, as fans can do things to stop the sport from vanishing, we need to stick together. We need to tell the networks what we want, we need to help them. Rather than allowing us to force feed us rubbish (like the proposed Alvarez v Freitas fight) we need to stand up and demand things like Maidana v Matthysse, fights that will turn a sports fan into a boxing fan. We need to give exposure to unknown fighters, tell everyone about the hottest prospect you saw at the weekend, share the vicious knockouts and do all you can to get people watching our sport!
Boxing fans unite!
