Is boxing done?
Sports Illustrated recently released its list of the highest paid athletes in sports last year the (earnings are calculated as salary plus endorsements)
The Worlds Top Earners
1) Tiger Woods (Golf) $86 Million
2) Micheal Schumacher (Autoracing) $81 Million
3) Andre Agassi (Tennis) $45.5 Million
4) Shaquille Oneal (Basketball) $41.5 Million
5) Oscar De La Hoya (Boxing) $40 Million
6) Micheal Vick (Football) $37 Million
7) David Beckham (Soccer) $30 Million
8) Kevin Garnett (Basketball) $30 Million
9) Peyton Manning (Football) $29.5 Million
10) LeBron James (Basketball) $28 Million
Notably absent from the list is a heavy weight boxer.. Apart from the charismatic De La Hoya only one other boxer is listed in the top 50, is middleweight Bernard Hopkins . How did heavyweight boxing slip so far off the mainstream radar...? "The richest prize in sports" has slipped so far that there are motorcycle racers (Valentino Rossi) and a football offensive lineman (St Louis Rams tackle Orlando Pace) earning more money.
In the US particularly, Heavyweight boxing has lost so much ground in popular culture that I would rank it behind pro and college football, pro and college basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, autoracing and hockey. Even The Ring magazine, the selfproclaimed "bible of boxing" admitted in a recent issue that boxing is now a cult sport.
It is a far cry from the days of Ali, and Frazier or even Tyson and Holyfield...
I guess to blame is both the alphabet soup of titles and the selfimposed ghettoisation brought about by pay per view boxing, which essentially made many of boxings flagship events invisible to the general public. Heavyweight boxing has slipped to the point where the major US networks no longer consider it a sufficently lucrative proposition to be worth their time.
Can it be saved? I dont know.. I think that the sport badly needs an icon, a Tiger Woods/Micheal Jordan/David Beckham to lift it out of the doldrums. At this point even a charismatic leading man might not be enough...
The Worlds Top Earners
1) Tiger Woods (Golf) $86 Million
2) Micheal Schumacher (Autoracing) $81 Million
3) Andre Agassi (Tennis) $45.5 Million
4) Shaquille Oneal (Basketball) $41.5 Million
5) Oscar De La Hoya (Boxing) $40 Million
6) Micheal Vick (Football) $37 Million
7) David Beckham (Soccer) $30 Million
8) Kevin Garnett (Basketball) $30 Million
9) Peyton Manning (Football) $29.5 Million
10) LeBron James (Basketball) $28 Million
Notably absent from the list is a heavy weight boxer.. Apart from the charismatic De La Hoya only one other boxer is listed in the top 50, is middleweight Bernard Hopkins . How did heavyweight boxing slip so far off the mainstream radar...? "The richest prize in sports" has slipped so far that there are motorcycle racers (Valentino Rossi) and a football offensive lineman (St Louis Rams tackle Orlando Pace) earning more money.
In the US particularly, Heavyweight boxing has lost so much ground in popular culture that I would rank it behind pro and college football, pro and college basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, autoracing and hockey. Even The Ring magazine, the selfproclaimed "bible of boxing" admitted in a recent issue that boxing is now a cult sport.
It is a far cry from the days of Ali, and Frazier or even Tyson and Holyfield...
I guess to blame is both the alphabet soup of titles and the selfimposed ghettoisation brought about by pay per view boxing, which essentially made many of boxings flagship events invisible to the general public. Heavyweight boxing has slipped to the point where the major US networks no longer consider it a sufficently lucrative proposition to be worth their time.
Can it be saved? I dont know.. I think that the sport badly needs an icon, a Tiger Woods/Micheal Jordan/David Beckham to lift it out of the doldrums. At this point even a charismatic leading man might not be enough...
posted by thoughtfulape | 10:55 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home