BoxRec

It's strange that whenever I watch German Boxing, there are massive crowds and the Television coverage is Glitzy and you feel your watching a Major event!

German Boxing seem's to have a great atmosphere with families going to see the fights and everything being clean and friendly.

Compare this to when I watch British boxing on Sky and the BBC and all I see is half empty crowds, dirty looking venues, a very menacing atmosphere with a crowd that look like Football hooligan's. Also the TV coverage is pretty poor and there's no real build up to the fights and they don't sell the fights as an Event unlike the Germans?

Why is this?

Both countries have a similiar type of Population and a Similiar type of Economy but the Germans seem to be miles ahead when it comes to Boxing Presentation and bringing in Family Crowds!


Do any of you Brits know why this is? Who is to blame?


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nasty wrote:It's strange that whenever I watch German Boxing, there are massive crowds and the Television coverage is Glitzy and you feel your watching a Major event!

German Boxing seem's to have a great atmosphere with families going to see the fights and everything being clean and friendly.

Compare this to when I watch British boxing on Sky and the BBC and all I see is half empty crowds, dirty looking venues, a very menacing atmosphere with a crowd that look like Football hooligan's. Also the TV coverage is pretty poor and there's no real build up to the fights and they don't sell the fights as an Event unlike the Germans?

Why is this?

Both countries have a similiar type of Population and a Similiar type of Economy but the Germans seem to be miles ahead when it comes to Boxing Presentation and bring in Family Crowds!

Do any of you Brits know why this is? Who is to blame?

There is no atmosphere at any of the German events that I have seen, everybody just sits around and gives out a gentle round of applause when someone lands a decent shot, us British have got passion and we create a fantastic atmosphere to be in when watching the boxing.

We (at least me anyway) don't feel the need for the amount of glitz and glamour that you yanks do and by the sounds of it the Jerries also fall into that category. I don't know if you get edited highlights, but there is plenty of pre fight build up (including stats, previous performances, punditry from many ex-world champs, there is even an hour long show (Ringside) on Sky on a Thursday that gives preveiws of all the weekends forthcoming action and the best of the previous weeks action.

All in all Nasty your talking gobsh!te IMO

I agree with Chambers. I've been to a few German cards and, other than for Ottke, the average small or medium hall card in Germany is watched half-interestedly and with minimal volume. Ottke and Hatton are up there together in terms of glitz, but after that the Brits take the Germans hands down on build-up and crowd knowledgability and interaction.

Ottke does puzzle me, in that I can't work out how he excited such rabid enthusiasm given his style. But they love him. If they can get that excited about a poke and hug style then that if nothing else shows that they're cheering more for the German Champion than for boxing.

Coconut wrote: Ottke does puzzle me, in that I can't work out how he excited such rabid enthusiasm given his style. But they love him. If they can get that excited about a poke and hug style then that if nothing else shows that they're cheering more for the German Champion than for boxing.

You MUST be right, remember Henry Maske, he was boring as too and the germans loved him and made a huge fuss at his fights.

The arenas are always full Nasty because a lot of the tickets are usually just given away as freebies in competitions and to corporate people hence the stale atmosphere. I agree with Chambers point in that respect, it's never intimidating or raucous but more gentle and serene, maybe the fact everyone knows who's won before the fight happens queels the enthusiasm

Boxing isn't more popular there than it is here. They have less bills, perhaps one every couple of months, but the bills they do have are massive, with all the promoter's fighters getting a fight. So it just looks more popular.
But these big bills are the way things are going here.

bennie wrote:Boxing isn't more popular there than it is here. They have less bills, perhaps one every couple of months, but the bills they do have are massive, with all the promoter's fighters getting a fight. So it just looks more popular.
But these big bills are the way things are going here.

They have more than one every couple of months. Including tomorrows show they have had 6 in march alone.

Freiheit wrote:

bennie wrote:Boxing isn't more popular there than it is here. They have less bills, perhaps one every couple of months, but the bills they do have are massive, with all the promoter's fighters getting a fight. So it just looks more popular.
But these big bills are the way things are going here.

They have more than one every couple of months. Including tomorrows show they have had 6 in march alone.

Wrong again. :(

boxing was way more popular in the UK in the 80s through to the mid 90s. boxing routinely got around 15 million viewers with big name stars like bruno, benn, eubank, hamed, etc.

then promoter allegedly took all his names over to SKY sports who advertise and promote fights minimally. those stars retired and his remaining fighters routinely had countless shitty titles tagged onto them, he brought in pay per view, he basically killed off boxing to everybody except the devout hardcores.

its all frank warrens fault.

I agree with you O R

When I was in England in the 90's, Boxing seemed much bigger, especially when it was on ITV on a saturday night. That's when all the Grannies used to Love Boxing and Fan's used to fill out the venues.

It seemed Boxing was fashionable and the place to be seen. It dosen't seem to have that anymore!



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nasty wrote:I agree with you O R

When I was in England in the 90's, Boxing seemed much bigger, especially when it was on ITV on a saturday night. That's when all the Grannies used to Love Boxing and Fan's used to fill out the venues.

It seemed Boxing was fashionable and the place to be seen. It dosen't seem to have that anymore!

I still maintain that the outcome of Eubank vs Watson, and the negative press boxing got in many well read tabloids did a ton in damaging boxings appeal and reputation, and thus popularity in this country. All of the sudden the grannies were switiching off and wanting to watch Buffy or Emmerdale instead...

Boxing was deemed overly brutal, and "shouldn't be followed and supported" (such was the national "impression" put across by the general media)

Boxing loses mass appeal... boxing is put on the TV less often... boxing ceases to be what the "mainstream" want to watch... boxing becomes less popular ....and so on....

Germany hasn't yet had (to my knowledge) two very high profile fighters gettng it on, watched by millions, and one of them nearly dying. When that happens... watch what happens to the sports popularity you mention nasty.

good points Loftgroov, an additonal problem is it has been off the terrestial channels here for so long also, that unless you have sky then you dont get exposed to it.
We arent talking bout most the people who come here who are passionate and love the game, we are talking bout the regular guy / lady whatever who is interested in the big names and excitement.
One of the resaons I think its great that the beeb are broadcasting and maybe over hyping the likes of Froch. While we might no agree with their viewpoints the man in the street wont necessarily know and may well tune in to see a decent fight.
Lets just hope it wasnt last week.

At the end of the day its a slow rebuilding process from the days when Sky took over and had a total monopoly on the sport. (For example my old man waits for me to tell him a potential cracker thats on he wont sit in on sat night to watch it..fair enough)
I try and point him the rightdirection but sometimes the nature of the sport serves up a very technical fight or one that isnt as exciting as expected. But I guess you can only say what you reckon will be exciting.

But on more positive note enthusiasm and excitement can go along way in attracting fans, I mean I knwo of plenty of people who will definitely watch Hatton Sat night just cos Ive been banging on about it for so long

What would be a solution to get fans back into boxing like in the times of ALI and all the greats how would it get back to the glory days any suggestions?

well firstly you need to get rid of all these shit belts, in fact preferabely just have one per weight category.
Never gonna happen but how many times do you hear from (especially older) people, I got fed up with boxing, bullshit belts dunno who the real champ is.....

Well thats not strictly true I try and argue, using Hopkins, Kostya, Spinks and now Wright as ideal counters, but in the long run we do need a max of the three established belts per division. There should be some copyroigth stopping lesser belts using the term world champ.

A restoration in Kudos for the European and British belts would also be better We know they are better than WBF etc etc but does the layman? Probably not.

Some big names and exciting styles on BBC / Itv would be great so that they can show the fights at a decent time. You know I mean you have to say if someone like Hatton was fighting for WBC / WBA / IBF title on mainstream channel at 8 pm on sat night he would have an immense TV audience. (READ SAME FOR US CHANNELS STOP THE PPV STUFF)
Make it more accesiible to people without them having to pay though the nose.
But again this isnt likely to happen.

Finally we need a better heavyweight divsion but these things a cyclical and Im sure once the dust settles the cream will rise in a year or two and the public will recognise a linear h/weight champ once more. Solid competition to this champ will also help.

More characters in the sport might help as well but thats a side issue, seems we dont have quite so much headline news about boxers anymore.
Not sure if thats a good or bad thing, probably good. But still any press generates public interest.



that enough to be going on with ?

Which belt would you leave? For mine, they're all a bunch of shysters. Any new belt can be bought, the Olympic movement is far from pure, which kind of leaves us with the Ring magazine champ, but again this is subject to opinion and potentially can be 'influenced', probably not so obviously at the absolute top but 5-10, say.

I think this is the best bet but the system is in itself intrinically flawed. I favour box-offs anyway, say four groups of four boxers boxing to find semi finallists and a final, but people would need to box more often for this to be viable. But could be good.

agree I woudl say that universally the IBF / WBC WBA are the most recognised belts so WBO would fall by the wayside, bit harsh ont hem maybe but thats the present status.
Along with IBO WBF W.I.P.E.ME.ARSE. belts that also exist they are so detrimental to the value of national and intercontinental titles.

Box offs great. coudl keep all the belt holders the main four then box off, thats a nice way of doing it and maybe the way forward I know Don king has done similar specifically with the middles not so long ago.

Would be a visionary way of sorting out the Unversally recognised undisputed champs, but actually could bre very difficult to enforce with all the potiltics in the sport.

If the media don't cover the sport sufficiently then the word won't get out, Glyn Leach wrote a good piece in Boxing Monthly this month about how many British people have heard of Oscar De La Hoya. He earns $20,000,000 or so a fight and is a massive personality in America yet i bet hardly anyone here as even heard of him, Boxing is more or less an underground sport here, even when the papers bother to write about Boxing they usually get it wrong anyway so what's the point?!

Yes, very true, boxing isn't mainstream enough...and it's unlikely that's going to change in the near future.

steve689 wrote:If the media don't cover the sport sufficiently then the word won't get out, Glyn Leach wrote a good piece in Boxing Monthly this month about how many British people have heard of Oscar De La Hoya. He earns $20,000,000 or so a fight and is a massive personality in America yet i bet hardly anyone here as even heard of him, Boxing is more or less an underground sport here, even when the papers bother to write about Boxing they usually get it wrong anyway so what's the point?!

Quoting a friend,de la hoya is known as.."that fornicating rich mexican who lives in america"....straight up..i was talking boxing with couple of friends of mine....and if it wasnt for C5 and BBC..they wouldnt even know that.

accurate description though haha

nice one bg you always make me chuckle.

overhand_right wrote:boxing was way more popular in the UK in the 80s through to the mid 90s. boxing routinely got around 15 million viewers with big name stars like bruno, benn, eubank, hamed, etc.

then promoter allegedly took all his names over to SKY sports who advertise and promote fights minimally. those stars retired and his remaining fighters routinely had countless shitty titles tagged onto them, he brought in pay per view, he basically killed off boxing to everybody except the devout hardcores.

its all frank warrens fault.

In Germany they took the other way. Nowadays all fights are on free-TV. Even the Klitschko-fights (since 2002).

Boxing has been very popular again since the Maske/Rocchigiani/Michalczewski-era. But you must see that the last great champion was Bubi Scholz. And his last fight was 1964. So we had 25 years of rather nothing. A Rene Weller was the biggest hype.....There was just a big hole of 25 years!!!!! I think this is the reason why there is maybe a overhype when 20,000 spectators watch Klitschko-Moli!!! And the tickets are fornicating expensive.

Of course there are a lot of spectators who just go to a fight because Ottke was a german champion. But there a lot of boxing enthusiasts, too, when you see that there were 5,000 spectators for a Regina Halmich-fight (with a unknown Erdei-undercard). And the next Halmich-fight takes place in Kiel Ostseehall, where you can bring in 15,000. That´s not bad.

I think the biggest difference is in the characters of the boxers. If you compare Ottke and Lennox Lewis then it`s obvious that Ottkes success comes from the fact that he is a "man from and for the people" who boxes in his hometown and is authentic. And this comes together with success. The same is to say about the Klitschkos or Maske. These are also smart and nice guys outside the ring and they fight not only once or twice a year. And I think Lewis is just loved by a minority in England. Maybe it is the same with Hatton, Calzaghe and the other world-class-boxers. Take some football players like Beckham or Shearer. And take Lewis. I think it is not the same level. Take Kahn or Ballack and Ottke/Klitschkos there`s no big difference.

Regarding the future maybe this could turn around when Harrison could be the big one. I don´t know him that much but I think with a big world title he could push the whole boxing scene in Britain and it could be a whole different ballgame.

Another reason is that the promoters and their marketing do a better job in germany. But this took 15 years.

Anyway things in sports could change were quickly. Look at tennis. Nobody in Germany gives a fornicate on it anymore. look 15 years back. this was a hype. And Formula 1. Did you know a name of german race driver 15 years ago? So maybe in 3 years there is a big boxing hype in Britain caused by a british HW champion! I wish him and his fans good luck and health!!! And a better appearance than Lewis!

Agreed that it's pretty true, and very sad, that most British sports fans don't know who the best boxers in the world are, but with regard to the original question, I don't think we're too different from Germany in this.

However, there's another connected point to be made which does interest me, and that's are the Germans watching boxing or are they watching Germans? I think it's the latter. They've been fed heros like Maske and Ottke and told to cheer for them, and they damn well do it.

What I'm worried about is that I as a UK citizen am on the road to doing that with guys like Calzaghe or Eastman, both of whom I rate to varying levels but both of whom excite differing degrees of derision in the States. It's clear that there are a whole stack of 'prospects' that the BBC and SKY are pumping up to ridiculous levels, and maybe they're doing the same with the top guys as well.

That said, we do have a stronger boxing fan base anyway, and the Germans have a degree of histoy with regard to flocking as one nation behind one boxer, but just a thought.



On a side issue, it's atrocious that so many boxing fans in this country have never seen Jones et al fight.

J wrote:accurate description though haha

nice one bg you always make me chuckle.

Coconut wrote:Agreed that it's pretty true, and very sad, that most British sports fans don't know who the best boxers in the world are, but with regard to the original question, I don't think we're too different from Germany in this.

However, there's another connected point to be made which does interest me, and that's are the Germans watching boxing or are they watching Germans? I think it's the latter. They've been fed heros like Maske and Ottke and told to cheer for them, and they damn well do it.

What I'm worried about is that I as a UK citizen am on the road to doing that with guys like Calzaghe or Eastman, both of whom I rate to varying levels but both of whom excite differing degrees of derision in the States. It's clear that there are a whole stack of 'prospects' that the BBC and SKY are pumping up to ridiculous levels, and maybe they're doing the same with the top guys as well.

That said, we do have a stronger boxing fan base anyway, and the Germans have a degree of histoy with regard to flocking as one nation behind one boxer, but just a thought.



On a side issue, it's atrocious that so many boxing fans in this country have never seen Jones et al fight.

In Germany they don´t only watch fights with Ottke or Maske. Michalczewski and the Klitschkos have more spectators in the arenas e.g. though they are not german or german heritage. Of course there won´t be a mass histeria if a Calzaghe-Reid-fight would take place in Germany. But what would take place if Mario Veit vs Danilo Häussler would fight in Wembley Arena? In every country the national or national based boxers have the most attention.

Watch the yanks. over there it´s more extreme. even the boxing fans don´t know british or german boxer.

Regarding the TV stations we have a problem. The 2 main channels (ARD,ZDF) show boxing events live, but only the 2 or 3 main fights when a Sauerland or a Kohl boxer is on. Maybe the others are shown on Eurosport sometimes, they also show some french fights on Eurosport. DSF (sport channel) show S.E.S. fights (e.g. Stieglitz or Monse etc.). They don´t show U.S. or UK fights. I think it has something to do with the costs of the licences. I don`t know exactly. Only on Premiere (Pay-TV) you can see U.S. fights, but not live.

The single biggest thing which could help our sport out which is feasible (rather than J's understandable fantasy of cleaning up the shitty belts) is a return to prime time terrestrial TV coverage.

We as hardcore fans might slate the Beeb, especially calling Froch the biggest prospect in world boxing, etc, but a return to prime time TV with one or two characters would do wonders for the sport.

Glyn Leach's article that Steve quoted earlier was bang on. I bet less than 10% of the general public have heard of De La Hoya. I bet less than 5% would recognize a picture of him.

Now Greg Dyke (a supporter of the fight game who's first job was as a fight reporter) has done the journey from the BBC, I fear that coverage might dwindle. I hope not but they are getting the Premiership back next year and something will be fucked off - guaranteed.