Popularity of boxing in world

[Cent0089]

Hello what do you think? In which countries is boxing one of most popular sport? And in which countries is boxing almost unknown ? I mean both amateur and professional

[oogiebe]

Hello what do you think? In which countries is boxing one of most popular sport? And in which countries is boxing almost unknown ? I mean both amateur and professional

For this American it's Britain by a long shot. Boxing seems to be losing it's luster in the US. Its popularity is seemingly based on the popularity of the HW division, which shows we have a lot of casuals here.

[dagilechia]

in Poland boxing loses to MMA, in 00s Boxing was still more popular, since 10s MMA is more popular but what made it more popular? freak fights. Everyone in Poland knows who Golota, Michalczewski, and to a lesser extent but still vast majority, Adamek is. Szpilka is quite popular, Wlodarczyk is too but he's past it, there are more MMA popular fighters, especially young people follow MMA rather than Boxing.

[oogiebe]

in Poland boxing loses to MMA, in 00s Boxing was still more popular, since 10s MMA is more popular but what made it more popular? freak fights. Everyone in Poland knows who Golota, Michalczewski, and to a lesser extent but still vast majority, Adamek is. Szpilka is quite popular, Wlodarczyk is too but he's past it, there are more MMA popular fighters, especially young people follow MMA rather than Boxing.

In the US too, boxing is losing ground to MMA. You don't see many controversial fights in MMA. and fighters fight more often and the best v. the best. Not much politics as compared.

[Cent0089]

Agree, in UK boxing is a big deal. IMO boxing is most popular in Britain, Cuba, USA, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Russia, Philippines. I dont know where is boxing unknown. Maybe Middle east ?

[oogiebe]

Agree, in UK boxing is a big deal. IMO boxing is most popular in Britain, Cuba, USA, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Russia, Philippines. I dont know where is boxing unknown. Maybe Middle east ?

Middle east has some pretty good fighters out of Morocco; Syria, etc. They do, however; seem to relocate to the EU.

[dagilechia]

in Poland Boxing is a B or now maybe even C level sport, Polish boxing lacks talents and that's the main problem, fighters like Glowacki and Sulecki are unknown, at least now there 2 big tv stations that show boxing both national and international events (also amateur boxing but mostly national events). one of them is a public state owned station so they never demand ppv just because they cant, so Szpilka-Wach was shown on a biggest tv channel in Poland TVP1 and was watched by 1,8 million people.

[dagilechia]

in Spain seems like almost no one is into boxing really and it's almost impossible (or impossible) to watch fights on tv.

[dagilechia]

Agree, in UK boxing is a big deal. IMO boxing is most popular in Britain, Cuba, USA, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Russia, Philippines. I dont know where is boxing unknown. Maybe Middle east ?

you forgot to add Ukraine, boxing is very popular there

[oogiebe]

Agree, in UK boxing is a big deal. IMO boxing is most popular in Britain, Cuba, USA, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Russia, Philippines. I dont know where is boxing unknown. Maybe Middle east ?

you forgot to add Ukraine, boxing is very popular there

And in Croatia it's like the national sport! They are rabid fans there.

[dagilechia]

generally it seems that boxing now is more popular in Europe than in USA. Good fighters from small countries are big draws there like Briedis in Latvia, Pulev in Bulgaria or Hrgovic in Croatia, Wilder barely sells out in Alabama

[dagilechia]

Agree, in UK boxing is a big deal. IMO boxing is most popular in Britain, Cuba, USA, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Russia, Philippines. I dont know where is boxing unknown. Maybe Middle east ?

you forgot to add Ukraine, boxing is very popular there

And in Croatia it's like the national sport! They are rabid fans there.

are you sure or it's just Hrgovic that is popular?

[oogiebe]

you forgot to add Ukraine, boxing is very popular there

And in Croatia it's like the national sport! They are rabid fans there.

are you sure or it's just Hrgovic that is popular?

True, it may be Hrgovic. I was told that 47% if viewers watched his last fight.

[gilgamesh]

The U.K. is kinda the birthplace of Boxing as we know it, but it's probably never been as red hot there as it is now. There's probably been more British World Champions in the last 2 decades than there was in the previous 80 or possibly even 100 years.

Of course some of that is due to the proliferation of World Titles, for instance guys like Liam Smith would never be World Champion in a world where there's only 1 Champ per division, but it's still a big deal to fight fans to have more Champions from their country.

Nationalism seems to be a bigger deal to fight fans from abroad than it is to fight fans in the States. Here we just like exciting fighters, and don't really give a sh*t where they come from. Almost everyone else in the world wants THEIR guys to be the Champ, and is firmly behind them.

I would imagine due to the popularity of Pacquiao, and now with Naoya Inoue becoming such a big deal that Boxing is gaining popularity in Asian nations as well.

[oogiebe]

The U.K. is kinda the birthplace of Boxing as we know it, but it's probably never been as red hot there as it is now. There's probably been more British World Champions in the last 2 decades than there was in the previous 80 or possibly even 100 years.

Of course some of that is due to the proliferation of World Titles, for instance guys like Liam Smith would never be World Champion in a world where there's only 1 Champ per division, but it's still a big deal to fight fans to have more Champions from their country.

Nationalism seems to be a bigger deal to fight fans from abroad than it is to fight fans in the States. Here we just like exciting fighters, and don't really give a sh*t where they come from. Almost everyone else in the world wants THEIR guys to be the Champ, and is firmly behind them.

I would imagine due to the popularity of Pacquiao, and now with Naoya Inoue becoming such a big deal that Boxing is gaining popularity in Asian nations as well.

True...this American's favorite all time HW is Lennox Lewis. CW: Usyk; LH: Bob Foster; SMW; Ward; MW: Monzon; WW Napoles; LW: Duran; FW: Sanchez; LW: Arguello; BM; Olivares, etc. Hardly dominated by American fighters.

[gilgamesh]

generally it seems that boxing now is more popular in Europe than in USA. Good fighters from small countries are big draws there like Briedis in Latvia, Pulev in Bulgaria or Hrgovic in Croatia, Wilder barely sells out in Alabama

It's hard for people to get over with the fans in the U.S. these days. They have to have that indefinable something to create star power. Maybe if Wilder can prove he truly is THE MAN in the division he'd become more popular, but even then I'm not sure.

I'd love to see Boxing have a resurgence in America. Hopefully with Boxing returning to network TV it'll gain some popularity. I kinda doubt it, but there's hope I guess.

I know the UFC don't do much of nothing for me personally, and it doesn't seem to be as big a deal to sports fan in general as it was before.

I do like that Kickboxing seems to be gaining ground as a more prominent combat sport as it's really fun to watch as well, and sorta resembles the old days of Boxing with the frequency with which the top names fight.

[DrDuke]

In Russia MMA is more popular now. Everyone know Khabib and McGregor and buy UFC clothes at Reebok shops.

[gilgamesh]

The U.K. is kinda the birthplace of Boxing as we know it, but it's probably never been as red hot there as it is now. There's probably been more British World Champions in the last 2 decades than there was in the previous 80 or possibly even 100 years.

Of course some of that is due to the proliferation of World Titles, for instance guys like Liam Smith would never be World Champion in a world where there's only 1 Champ per division, but it's still a big deal to fight fans to have more Champions from their country.

Nationalism seems to be a bigger deal to fight fans from abroad than it is to fight fans in the States. Here we just like exciting fighters, and don't really give a sh*t where they come from. Almost everyone else in the world wants THEIR guys to be the Champ, and is firmly behind them.

I would imagine due to the popularity of Pacquiao, and now with Naoya Inoue becoming such a big deal that Boxing is gaining popularity in Asian nations as well.

True...this American's favorite all time HW is Lennox Lewis. CW: Usyk; LH: Bob Foster; SMW; Ward; MW: Monzon; WW Napoles; LW: Duran; FW: Sanchez; LW: Arguello; BM; Olivares, etc. Hardly dominated by American fighters.

Some of my early favorites were Gatti, Leonard Dorin, Erik Morales and Jose Luis Castillo. 2 Mexicans and 1 Romanian in the mix.

Now my favorite is GGG from Kazakhstan. It truly makes no difference to me where they're from. I like the way you fight or I don't give a sh*t about you.

Pretty rare that somebody wins me over with their personality either if they can't back it up in the ring. It doesn't hurt if I feel I can relate to the way they tick, but it's not a necessity to me.

[dagilechia]

And in Croatia it's like the national sport! They are rabid fans there.

are you sure or it's just Hrgovic that is popular?

True, it may be Hrgovic. I was told that 47% if viewers watched his last fight.

43% as far as i know, but i think it's only Hrgović, and 90% out of those 43% couldn't name 10 current HW fighters

[dagilechia]

they fucked up this year CW WBSS edition, American fought unknown Russian in eastern Russia, Cuban that is unknown in the states fought a Pole in Florida, unknown in the States, Germany based Armenian fought Latvian and a Pole fought Russian in Chicago. USA CW WBSS events sold like in total 1500 tickets. why not reasonable locations like:

Tabiti vs Fayfer in Chicago
Dorticos vs Masternak as we seen couldn't sell more than 1000 tickets in Florida, why not Dorticos vs Masternak in one of the big Polish arena (Kraków, Łódź, Gdańsk, Gliwice and a lot more)
Briedis vs Mikaelian in Riga/Hamburg
Glowacki vs Vlasov somewhere in Poland or in Moscow/Kazan.

i don't think that location must be necessarily neutral, just provide fair judges and that's it.

[Wuuupa]

Cuba #1 sport
Mexico #2, guess football #1
England #2, football, boxing

I guess in countrys like oman, micronesia boxing plays 0 role.

Its easy to figure out. Football is the #1 sport in the world, every continent loves it except australia ozeania. Even usa they start more and more playing football. But after that boxing has many fans in north america, europe, africa and asia (big help was pacquiao). Not many train boxing but many love boxing, no wounder ali is often rated by many people as #1 athlete of any sports ever amongs others like jordan, pele or gretzky...

The only reason why usa is not as much into boxing as they used to be is, they had plenty of high quality bixers to watch tyson, bowe, hagler, hearns, leonard and later got boring mayweather, boring ward. As soon as a superstar from USA comes along a la tyson de la hoya than millions of americans will be back watching boxing. Boxing is the most exciting sport in the world, unless you fight kike floyd. Imagine prime tyson, prime chavez, prime hagler, prime de la hoya or prime robinson today, people would get nuts, ppv and dazn registrations explode

[Comanche]

Boxing isn't the #2 sport in England. Football, Rugby Union, Rugby League and Cricket are all more popular than boxing. Arguably horse racing as well.

[Luckybattles]

I’m curious as to what kind of crowd is gonna show up in Los Angeles to see Uzgategui vs Plant. An obscure Venezuelan vs an unknown contender from the mid west. Mexicans are big fight fans but they mainly follow fellow Mexican fighters. I think the same probably applies to African Americans.

[Enlightened-One]

For this American... Boxing seems to be losing it's luster in the US. Its popularity is seemingly based on the popularity of the HW division, which shows we have a lot of casuals here.

In the US too, boxing is losing ground to MMA.

I find it curious to see you say that, when the financials related to the most recent boxing and MMA related TV deals in the US territories appear to suggest otherwise.

It’s interesting to see Dana White recently confirming that Zuffa are also jumping onto bandwagon, because they’re definitely moving forward with their own plans to expand their portfolio by creating their own boxing organisation.

There must be a legitimate reason why so much money is being invested into the sport of boxing in the US. And I feel that it might be because the main barometer that is used to measure “popularity”, in commercial terms, is revenue generation. This strongly suggests that there’s more money to be made from boxing than there is for MMA.

I’m not suggesting that the gap isn’t closing or that one day MMA may become more “popular” than boxing in the US, but from a commercial perspective, it’s abundantly clear that day hasn’t arrived yet.

[pugilisticspecialist]

There are no MMA stars under 30.
Boxing has three: Joshua, Canelo and Broner.