By Greg Houghton: Amid the madness that the whole world is going through right now, it’s imperative to have something to look forward to when we return to normal life, whatever that will look like. What looks likely in times of such uncertainty, however, is that us lucky boxing fans have more to look forward to than most.
There has likely never been a better time in history to be a boxing fan than right now, for what comes next could be the most exciting period that the sport will ever see in its entire existence.
The career of a professional boxer, nine times out of ten, is a frustratingly short one. The small window of opportunity a fighter has to make life-changing money within the short period of their athletic peak is one of unbelievable risk which will oftentimes not pay off. In this seemingly unreal time for boxing where we have numerous PPV worthy stars in every single weight division and more eyes on main events than we did in the dizzy heights of the ’90s that featured Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis, the allotted time in which our current PPV stars can make their dent in the universe, thanks to Coronavirus, just got even shorter.
It’s difficult not to get excited about what comes next when you sense the borderline aggression behind Eddie Hearn’s words as he speaks of boxing’s future on his Instagram Live each day. As the biggest fish in boxing promotion by a mile right now, he has stated on numerous occasions that he is “no longer competing with other boxing promoters. The real competition moving forward will be against other sports”.
This means that in order to compete with the Premier League, Formula 1, Tennis, Golf and many other sports with billion-dollar sponsorships in place subject to them taking place, we are entering a time in which the sports platforms with the highest budgets are all about to try and outdo one another!
How does boxing compete? Huge fights, lots of them!
Step aside money offered to Pulev and several other mandatories to make the big fights happen immediately? One PPV event per month for the rest of 2020? A big card every fortnight for the foreseeable? A return to midweek boxing cards like the ‘Budweiser Tuesday Night Fight’ era of the 80’s and 90’s?
At this stage, any of these outcomes seem likely as what we have been promised is the most aggressive promotional return to the sport we have ever seen, in a bid to breathe oxygen onto the roaring flame that is boxing in the year of 2020. Lest we forget the opposing teams of Top Rank, Queensbury, and PBC who are no doubt plotting their own counter left hooks to the chin of the Matchroom and DAZN empire in a bid to stake some market share.
So what does this mean?
Well, as if you needed reminding of the state of current boxing affairs, some questions we can occupy our minds with during these times are;
Who’s Canelo going to choose next? Is Callum Smith too big or Billy Joe Saunders too slippery for him?
Does Golovkin find one more ‘Big Drama Show’ in him before he says goodbye?
Does this heavyweight triumvirate between Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder, and Anthony Joshua draw parallels to that of Frazier, Ali, and Foreman in which each of the three has their bogey man who they just can’t beat?
Did Luke Campbell make Vasyl Lomachenko look human after all? Are Devin Hayney and Ryan Garcia the real deal and ready to compete at that level? And what now for Loma?
How good really is Usyk at heavyweight? Who’ll be the next banana skin for the top three out of he, Dillian Whyte, Ruiz, and Parker?
Worth the wait?!
Well, with no events scheduled and the next generation of stars currently not getting paid, the sport of boxing at present is like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. The more you listen to what the major promoters of the sport are saying, the more it looks as though they are about to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the first six months back, just in order to survive. If you connect the dots, it seems clear that what we are about to witness upon its return is the most aggressive delivery of boxing events in history.
Call it fate, fortune, or timing, it just so happens that the upcoming period of spraying mammoth fights at the audiences sat at home around the world does indeed contain a number of arguable P4P all-time greats.
Our job as fans? To merely sit back and enjoy the immanent battles between promoters, which in turn will lead to potentially monumental fights occurring one after the other.
Fasten your seatbelt, buckle up and enjoy the “Post Coronavirus” era of boxing that could well go down in history as one of the greatest times our beloved sport will ever see.