By: Sean Crose<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s admit it, boxing hasn\u2019t been doing that bad lately. Unlike say, 10 years ago, the best are now fighting the best or nearly the best. Matches are actually being made, matches that people want to see. It\u2019s not fair to gripe about the sport in general right now. It\u2019s arguably doing better than it has in a while. Sure, there\u2019s things in need of improvement, but overall matters don\u2019t seem to be all that bad for fight fans. <\/p>\n
Still there\u2019s something unsettling about the fact that the biggest fights in the world right now are novelty fights. You know, Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua, Floyd Mayweather versus Mike Tyson, and of course, this fall\u2019s upcoming Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather rematch. Yes, that\u2019s a novelty bout too because both men are way past their primes. This isn\u2019t Leonard-Hearns 2, this is Mayweather- Pacquiao the sequel no one was really dying for. <\/p>\n
Make no mistake about it. I\u2019m looking forward to Mayweather-Pacquiao part two. I think it\u2019s going to be an interesting matchup. For something that doesn\u2019t cost extra to be viewed on Netflix, it\u2019s hard to say why this would turn anyone off. It\u2019s just that there\u2019s no current stars bringing in this kind of attention \u2013 at lease stateside. And that really is the reason why novelty bouts are doing as well as they are\u2026 because boxing is lacking any real stars right now. You know, the kind Mayweather and Pacquiao used to be. <\/p>\n
This of course doesn\u2019t mean there won\u2019t ever be major boxing stars again. That\u2019s ridiculous to even imagine. Anthony Joshua, for instance, is a big star in England, but not globally. That doesn\u2019t mean the next big name to come around won\u2019t be an international phenomenon. It just hasn\u2019t happened yet. Shakur Stevenson certainly has the makings of a serious household name. As long as he keeps winning, there\u2019s something there for the general public to keep an eye on. There\u2019s other names of course too, such as Ryan Garcia.<\/p>\n
It would be nice to see these fighters take the spotlight now, though, instead of waiting for things to move at a snail\u2019s pace while novelty bouts suck up all the energy. That\u2019s simply not the way it\u2019s going to be though, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re all going to have to deal with. Having said that, there are going to be excellent, high profile fights between contemporary combatants in the near future. Let\u2019s just hope some of them will be able to make the jump to household name. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By: Sean Crose Let\u2019s admit it, boxing hasn\u2019t been doing that bad lately. Unlike say, 10 years ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-503820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}