What the Fight Night Round 4 commercial tells us about boxing

by Zak Woods on Jul 14, 2009 11:45 AM EDT in Off Topic Comment 2 comments

For those that can't watch the commercial it entails several athletes, rappers, musicians and celebrities talking about an epic boxing match. The spot ends with the discovery that they are talking about the video game mega fight of Ali vs. Tyson in Fight Night Round 4.

This is one of the principle appeals of sports video games; that you can create hypothetical match-ups between great teams and athletes. You can have the Steelers of the 70's play the 49ers of the 80's or have Bjorn Borg play Roger Federer at Wimbledon. Perhaps I am reading too much into this, as this themes exist in all sport video games, but this marketing device by Electronic Arts reveals the troubling future for boxing.

Boxing's business model depends on mega-fights and without popular fighters there can be no mega-bouts. The sad truth for boxing is outside the potential Manny Pacquiao Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout the foreseeable future is very dark if not extinction.

Currently there is no heir apparent who can step up and fill the void. Is there anything for the future of boxing besides Ali/Tyson documentaries and Rocky movies?

Hell, most of the people in the commercial aren't even in the business of boxing, please tell me why is Steve Nash in it? The only representatives from the boxing world were Joe Tessitore (an announcer), Oscar De La Hoya (retired fighter) and Freddie Roach (a trainer). If that's the best star power that boxing can muster then the end times are definitely here.

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Here's the rub

Whether boxing remains a premier combat sport or not, it will likely never be at the “end times.” The future might not be very bright, but just go to BoxRec and look around a bit. There’s tons of fighters, tons of fights and tons of cards happening all around the world on a daily basis. It’s difficult to “kill” any sport, and probably impossible to kill one as simple and visceral as “punch each other until one of you can’t stand or the time expires.”

Japan and Brazil have both already experienced entire cycles of MMA boom and bust, and the sport undeniably soldiers on in both countries. Kickboxing had a weird little boom in the US for a while, and then it more or less faded away—yet that sport certainly hasn’t died.

I don’t have a snappy conclusion, but lets just not go overboard with this.

It ends in an armbar or a strangle regardless.

by capital L on Jul 14, 2009 9:37 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

yeah...

the end times comment is over the top and not really needed.

But I feel that my point about the premire boxing game being sold on the star power of the 80’s, 70’s and 60’s is a horrible fact for boxing right now

watchkalibrun.com

by Zak Woods on Jul 15, 2009 12:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs