Boxing in football's shadow

dondada · Post by **dondada** » 06 Nov 2005, 08:15

Not often I put up a link to a BBN story these days but this comment piece is worth a look.

Hits the nail on the head for me:

http://www.britishboxing.net/?page=news&id=1030

dandantheweatherman · Post by **dandantheweatherman** » 06 Nov 2005, 08:21

I happen to think part of the fault lies with boxing. Having been largely tucked away on Sky for, what, the best part of a decade fighters have been unable to become household names in the way that, say, Benn, Eubank, Hamed etc were able to in the 1990s and Bruno and McGuigan were in the 1980s.

With this in mind part of me thought it was good that Audley and Amir Kahn's early fights are on BBC and ITV respectively. Obviously they need to be cashing in and staying in the limelight following Olympic success. The only problem then is of course that their learning fights and inevitable mis-matches are for all to see and this can (and IMO has) given the wrong impression to the public. I have no idea how to deal with this, but it's a problem.

Ulimately boxing has always been popular in the UK and when decent fights involving popular or well-known fighters are on network TV the public's imagination does, to a certain extent, get captured. Which, incidentally, is why I think in the long term Ricky Hatton's fight with Manussa (sp?) would have been better on ITV1.

dondada · Post by **dondada** » 06 Nov 2005, 08:42

Wise words, Dan. Agreed.

ILikeBeer · Post by **ILikeBeer** » 06 Nov 2005, 12:03

The dominance of football on the back pages of our national newspapers continues unabated, regardless of the lacklustre performances, the shameful antics of its players or the continuing and subsequently boring dominance of the top clubs.

Barely a week goes by without the words “overrated”, “pampered”, “disgraceful” and “roasting” being heavily featured in the football supplements of most newspapers, yet the men who really earn their money the hard way fail to be adequately recognised.

It's because, no matter what our personal opinions of football or the football players are, it is still the most popular sport in this country. I follow football, but boxing is my favourite sport. However, when it comes to sport, they have to write about what sells the most papers. There's no point moaning on about it.