Most People Don't Know Shit About Boxing

 Maybe it’s just me and my need to feel right all the time, but I don’t tend to get into conversations that I am not confident that i know what i’m talking about. When I get interested in a thing, I spend a lot of time reading and absorbing as much as I can so that I Can talk about it and not feel left out, I stay quiet when I can see two vets talking and I chime in when it’s clear someone doesn’t really know what they’re talking about - I have a crushing need for people to believe I know what i’m talking about because knowing what i’m talking about is a big source of pride for me, and as I get older, I understand that other people are not the same way, and that’s fine… but I don’t understand why people feel the crushing need to constantly put their unfiltered dogshit takes on something they clearly don’t know about, ESPECIALLY when it’s not groundbreaking or original.

One of the easiest ways to gain headlines in Mixed Martial Arts is by talking about Boxing - for a sport that has long dwarfed Boxing in terms of cultural significance, MMA has never grown out of the intense little brother complex that they have, and with the increase in crossovers from MMA to Boxing, it’s only increased the rate at which these abysmal conversations happen. Most recently (at the time of writing this, 12/1/2023), UFC Heavyweight Tom Aspinall made headlines by talking about Boxing, saying that he is a massive fan of boxing but that the direction Boxing is going is terrible, the best don’t fight the best, fights are predictable, the cards are weak, ajnvjonsdvjnsvojsanfvojsn. I can only attribute this to the supreme arrogance of MMA fighters and pundits where they feel like their take is unique enough to throw into the zeitgeist despite this being the exact line of criticism spouted at Boxing by MMA for almost 20 years. I swear to god, it’s been the exact same thing, right down to “I’m a massive fan of boxing” - at what point do you forfeit that qualifier, by the way? I know it’s thrown in as a social nicety, you aren’t criticizing the sport of boxing but you’re criticizing the people who ruined it, I Watched boxing growing up and it was so much better then, but when do you get to say “I love boxing” and then spout a bunch of words about how you don’t understand how boxing works? At this point, just say you don’t like it and stop talking about it, because you don’t know enough about it to talk about it, and the problem is that no interviewer who asks MMA fighters this layup question that always gets coverage and always sparks arguments is literate enough in both MMA and Boxing to ask a follow up question or give context or debunk a point, it’s literally just a free headline for idiots to clap their hands and jack off over how boxing is lame and mma is so cool as mma becomes way less cool. So this is going to be me talking about the common talking points by idiots about Boxing being bad and how you can fix it, because, as it turns out, Most People Don’t Know Shit About Boxing.

Let’s start with the big one, because this will permeate everything. Every couple of months, someone has this genius idea on how to “fix” boxing - simply have one company, one championship, one source of promotional power so you can compel boxers to fight one another, because this fixes all of boxing’s issues (Fractured, too many championships, best don’t fight the best”. This is an amazing idea! Why has nobody thought of that! Simply gather all of the boxers and put them in one promotion, that would make it a very exciting sport to watch! This is sarcasm, this idea is stupid. So, the theory of this idea is fine, basically make Boxing the UFC; my biggest pet peeve i think  in the entire conversation is that the entire sport of boxing is always compared to the promotion of the UFC, so you’re able to cherrypick the doldrums of boxing and compare it to undercards in the UFC and say “well isn’t this interesting”, it’s not interesting, you’re just talking to idiots who don’t know better - but the idea of “Make UFC but Boxing”, where the best fight he best three times a year and there’s one championship and one champion isn’t a bad idea in theory. Cards would be better, everything would be a lot more concise and direct, this makes a lot of sense - the problem is that it’s not only impossible in Boxing for a lot of reasons, but also the problem is that it paints the UFC structure as the platonic ideal instead of just an idea or an alternative. Speaking of the UFC individually, don’t compare it to anything else - nobody can say that the UFC, who owns their fighters, their championships, their rankings and their matchmaking, has “solved” how to balance those things and make sure that fighters are fairly compensated and fans are provided the best product. The UFC has notoriously been known to manipulate rankings for negotiating power, grant title shots based on promotional preference, award interim titles based on promotional preference all while massively underpaying their fighters and manipulating their systems to more effectively underpay their fighters. There’s more i’ll get into in this, so let’s leave it there - the UFC model has all sorts of problems, but in theory, they put on more fights which is better for the consumer than the Boxing model. Why this is stupid in practice is that, int he sport of boxing, the UFC existing would be illegal. In 1999 and 2000, the United States Government instituted the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, a piece of legislature that effectively broke up the corrupt and broken systems that Boxing promoters had been operating with for decades that took advantage of fighters and hoarded wealth and power for themselves. There are a couple major pieces of the Ali Act that the UFC model would directly violate:

• Promoters cannot force Boxers to sign with them to fight one of their fighters.
• Promoters cannot enforce long term oppressive contracts
• Boxing promotions cannot have their own recognized championships (Similar to I)
• Boxing promotions cannot organize their own rankings

The Ali Act existed to decentralize power - Before 2000, Promoters like Don King were able to monopolize the market of top fighters because he forced them to sign with him to fight his fighters, locked them into forever contracts that extended if you won as a champion, and on top of that just steal their money. This was deemed to be manipulative and needed to change - now, a lot more power is in the hands of the boxers. Promoters are there for co-ordination, they are a helpful party, especially for up and coming boxers, but when you get to a higher level, promoters are more like partners who can smooth out things like distribution and promotion instead of the mob bosses who run the UFC. Promoters at a high level aren’t matchmakers because they only promote one of the boxers in the equation, and by virtue of more boxers having more power, yes, there are roadblocks to making fights consistently - it doesn’t help that promoters were able to find loopholes in these sanctions that prevented them from compelling boxers to sign with them by each promoter signing exclusive broadcast deals with different outlets, so a fighter promoted by Golden Boy, who could only be shown on HBO, had a whole lot of roadblocks to be able to fight someone who was promoted by Top Rank, who could only be shown on ESPN. There are a lot of different sources of power in Boxing - Boxers have a lot, Promoters have a little, sanctioning companies (Who own the belts and hte rankings) also have a decent amount of power, it’s very scattered and can be hard to follow, but yes, that is by design, and, if you ask me, that IS more healthy than the model of one promotions having all the fighters and all the power. What it ISN’T is easier to access, and that’s really what this complaint is about - boxing is not easy enough o follow, make it easier to follow like the UFC ; well, the UFC cannot exist in boxing, because it would be illegal there, so stop trotting this out, you sound stupid.

While we’re on the subject of the UFC being illegal in Boxing, let’s talk about the next common argument against Boxing - “Boxing cards are never good, they are just the main event while the UFC stacks their undercards to give the viewer the most entertainment”. This is true! Boxing does not typically have “Stacked” undercards while the UFC has more intriguing fights - I could throw out the VERY REAL AND LEGITIMATE defense that, again, Boxing is an entire sport and comparing all of boxing’s cards to the UFC’s is a conversation of scale - there were approximately 1.5 million American men practicing boxing for competition in 2021 while the UFC employs around 600 fighters male and female, but you know what, i’m going to give this person who is making dogtrash arguments the benefit of the doubt and say they are talking about significant undercards under major headliners that people watch. Once again, I don’t know why this is viewed as an empirical flaw and not just a difference in business philosophy, the UFC began a culture of “stacking” undercards because they needed to incentivize people to watch and they had like 40 fighters and were going bankrupt, so they’d hold shows every 3 months and had to make sure that the fights were good enough to convince people to part with their money, and that became their appeal - you don’t tune in to watch headliners, you tune in to watch “the UFC card”. It’s a different structure, for a couple pretty big reasons that i’ll get into in a moment, but, again, this argument is presented as if UFC’s model is the best choice and not, just, an option. I always viewed boxing undercards as functional - it’s for the live audience and to get boxers reps, but, fine, the idea that boxing should be immune to cultural shifts is wrong, the world demands content and Boxing isn’t providing it outside of the main events. Let’s talk about how the UFC is able to “stack” their undercards… more importantly, let’s talk about how the UFC exists illegally, not if they were to enter boxing, but as a business entity.

The UFC is CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW in court over violations of antitrust laws, with a class of fighters accusing them of being an illegal monopoly and abusing their disproportionate power in the market place to systemically underpay and exploit fighters. In order to compete for the UFC, you have to sign an oppressive and restrictive contract in which you cannot participate in outside endeavors, they retain your image and likeness in perpetuity, they retain the right to cut you for any reason they see fit, you are not allowed to represent external sponsors, and this is before even talking about pay, which traditionally has come int he form of “Show” and “Win” portions split equally i.e 10k to show up, 10k to win, which can go up on a sliding scale with consecutive wins but resets to its base with losses. Fights can be announced without your signing of a contract, you can be removed from the UFC’s in house rankings whenever they want (There have been plenty of cases where fighters were removed from rankings as they negotiate so they cannot cite their placement in a division in relation to other fighters in terms of pay), your contract can be extended arbitrarily, and if you retire, they still retain the right to exclusivity (retired former champion Georges St-Pierre has remarked that he is not allowed to box because he is still under contract with the UFC). The UFC owns all of the fighters, they own all of the power for matchmaking, they own the distribution - this is RIGHT NOW being battled in court that this is illegal… so I ask why the UFC, an entity that is potentially illegally powerful, is meant to be the standard for “loading their undercard”? They are able to do this because of their disproportionate amount of power in coercing fighters to sign with them, and place them on cards whenever they feel like it, and EVEN THEN, it’s been a major criticism for at least 10 years but definitely over the last 5 years that UFC cards are getting worse as they fill undercards with worse and worse fights to pad out an unsustainable schedule, and that is with the UFC sharing a disproportionately low amount of revenue with the fighters, I believe it’s been approximated at around 20%, compared to the NBA and NFL’s collectively bargained 50% and I think that Boxing skews into the 60’s in favor of the boxers? I don’t fully remember the numbers, they’re out there if you want to look for them, i’m not going to do research when people are already talking about shit they don’t understand. This is why Boxing cards cannot be “stacked” - promotions only have access to a handful of elite fighters, and placing them all on one card is financially unjustifiable because paying 4 or 8 or 10 top boxers their substantial paychecks is not going to be offset by the money made from the event - it’s not going to scale up proportionately, that’s not how drawing power works. If an event makes 10 million dollars at the gate and the top boxers are making 60% of that, so let’s say 3 million each, adding another fight between two elite boxers on the undercard is not going to make that event jump to 20 million at the gate. It’s a question of access and cost - Boxing promoters don’t have access to the amount of fighters that the UFC does, in large part because it has been made impossible to hoard fighters exclusively in perpetuity, but even if htey did, putting every fighter on one card is financially unjustifiable - it’s why the UFC, who pays their fighters 20% of their revenue by the way, does not do that. One could make the argument that Fans shouldn’t care about finances and who is making how much money - If fans are responsible for their own enjoyment above everything, then how fighters and promoters split their money should be inconsequential, you just want to be entertained, and with the UFC as it exists, yes, whole cards are better than boxing whole cards… but in practice, you have to ignore all of this exploitation, all of the potentially illegal but unquestionably morally reprehensible practices done by the UFC in order to clap your hands at cards for your own entertainment, and if you think that this should be the norm, I don’t know, i think that says something about you as a person. 

Boxing has a lot of problems, but almost all of them are the byproduct of legislation brought in to make it a more fair and balanced landscape - this has been at the benefit of the boxers and at the expense of fans, which is why the sport is so easy to dig at. There are a lot of roadblocks to consistently big fights happening, the decentralization of power means that it’s very difficult to just drop in and follow boxing, but I think all of these are symptoms of the real problem, which is perception. If you come from MMA, or you’re young, things move incredibly fast - 3 years in MMA are worth 10 in any other sport, no sport has ever moved as fast as MMA has, so the expectation is that things can change at the drop of a dime - boxing isn’t like that. Boxing the sport has existed for over 100 years, its changes come extremely slowly, people drag their feet and cling to eras long after its clear that they’re done - the 2010’s were boxing as a failing state in the twilight of the boom period brought upon by a wealth of stars. Promotions didn’t want to do business with each other because of ego, boxers held out for bigger paychecks because that’s what higher ups did, network money was still plentiful so it enabled everybody to be at their worst - however, things have started changing. Network money has begun to dry up as landscapes change, there are almost no singular megastars left as combat sports drift more and more niche, and promotions have realized that the best thing they can do is break down the walls that they built and work together, which is why there have been a ton of unified and undisputed championships in 2022 and 2023. Expecting changes to happen on MMA’s timeline when how MMA exists cannot exist in boxing is ignorant and stupid, and I don’t doubt that this will change nothing, people have their reasons for disliking boxing preloaded and feel compelled to talk about Boxing while not liking it, but I implore any reasonable person out there who compares it to the UFC and says that theys hould be more like the UFC to think about what it is that you’re saying. You’re advocating for the most morally corrupt company in major sports to be the standard for how entire sports should operate - find god and become a better person.

There’s not a ton else to talk about, people who have problems with how boxing is so limited are stupid dweebs but that’s just a preference thing, people who talk about fighter pay and trot out the same tired “boxing undercard guys are paid less than ufc undercard guys” - sure, but regional mma headliners are paid as much as boxing undercard guys, and also boxing is skewed towards headliners and top fighters and they are paid significantly more than UFC Fighters because the UFC is stealing from their fighters in such a way that the supreme court is investigating how illegally they have gained their market share, I don’t know, i just wish MMA people would stop talking about boxing because it’s just embarrassing. I know it doesn’t feel embarrassing because MMA people still feel like they’re punching up at their big brother and everybody involved in MMA always cheers when it happens, but I promise, mma fans have a lot more to worry about than whether or not the 2nd fight on a boxing undercard is compelling.