Boxing's TV crossroads presents a chance for coherence, if there's a will

Asked about boxing's place in the sporting landscape, Jim Lampley, the long-time commentator and, to many, the voice of boxing, acknowledged that it was in a "difficult" spot.

Too many governing bodies, too many divisions, too many "nonsense title fights," all contributing factors that are "confusing and damaging to the sport," Lampley said.

Notably, Lampley didn't say this in 2023. Or even in recent years. We spoke in 2012 as he was launching a weekly boxing news magazine show on HBO.

The problems he identified for the sport more than a decade ago have only gotten more dire. Boxing's had a lot of rough years, but 2023 might have been its worst.

Showtime, the home of boxing for North American audiences for much of the past four decades, announced in October that it would get out of the boxing business at the end of the year. The move comes five years after HBO, once its main rival in the space, retreated from the fight business. Also in October, the Olympic program for 2028 Los Angeles was announced, and boxing was missing from it, squeezed out by new additions such as cricket and flag football amid the international federation's ongoing governance squabbles.

While boxing could return to the Olympics, its exclusion is potentially calamitous for the sport, eliminating the key grassroots pathway for future professionals - and what was once a public platform for would-be stars. The list of Olympic champions includes legends like Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Frazier, through to Oscar de la Hoya, erstwhile Canadian Lennox Lewis, and modern stars like Clarissa Shields, Katie Taylor, and Anthony Joshua.

But the Olympic decision has been looming for years. Where it was once a tentpole event at the world's biggest sporting spectacle, it has been on the fringes of recent Games, a diminishing number of countries sending teams, reflecting its fading status.

To the extent that there remains interest in the oldest of sports, a significant chunk of that has been garnered by those types of nonsense bouts that Lampley once lamented. On Friday, Jake Paul will fight Andre August in Florida to headline a card on DAZN, the streaming service that has become the biggest boxing broadcaster in the world somewhat by default. Paul, 26, most often described as a YouTube influencer, is fighting for the third time this year after bouts against former MMA fighter Nate Diaz and boxer Tommy Fury.

While PPV numbers are notoriously unreliable, the Paul-Fury card was reportedly one of the top-selling events of the year. Also on that list? A DAZN boxing PPV featuring Logan Paul, Jake's older brother, against an MMA fighter, and Tommy Fury against KSI, another YouTube influencer with a huge social media following. (Fury, the younger brother of current heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, has evidently discovered that there's more money and less danger in fighting influencers than trained boxers.)

It's one of boxing's biggest - perhaps central - conundrums: Even when the sport does show growth, especially with younger audiences, it comes in what's charitably referred to as crossover events that push it further away from the mainstream. The Paul-August fight will be only the YouTuber's second against a pure boxer, but August is a 35-year-old with a 10-1 record. The crossover side of boxing isn't exactly a meritocracy.

There are potential upcoming fights of the noncrossover variety that could hold broader appeal. American heavyweight Deontay Wilder and Britain's Joshua will both fight on a Dec. 23 card in Saudi Arabia, although not against each other. Wins for each would set up a potential bout between two of boxing's best-known names. And in February, Tyson Fury is scheduled to meet Oleksandr Usyk in a rare unifying heavyweight title fight. (Fury has one belt, and Usyk has the other three. There are always two belts too many in any boxing weight class.)

But the bigger news for the future of the sport came last week with the announcement that Premier Boxing Champions, the organization that was formerly partnered with Showtime, signed a deal with Amazon Prime Video for PPV events beginning in 2024. PBC, whose stable includes boxers such as Wilder, Terence Crawford, and Canelo Alvarez, one of the sport's few superstars, will also have some non-PPV fights and documentary series on the streaming service. The full schedule and territories where it'll be available have not yet been released.

The idea of streaming as a possible boxing savior has hovered around the sport for years. Where DAZN is still a niche service, giants like Netflix, Apple, and Prime have the potential to bring boxing to the kind of wide audience that it hasn't had since the days when fight fans wore fedoras, smoked cigarettes in the arena, and major fights were on network TV. The larger question is whether the PBC deal with Amazon could herald the kind of root-and-branch boxing reform for which fans have long clamored. Born from an era of shady deals and sketchy promoters, could the backing of a streaming benefactor steer the sport into more streamlined divisions and schedules?

It's no coincidence the drop in mainstream interest in boxing has been mirrored by the rise of MMA, which, whatever its faults, has been dominated by a single promotion that has served viewers a steady stream of content to consume.

Could boxing do the same? It is, of course, a question that has been around almost as long as those smoke-filled arenas. The problems were evident, as were the solutions. There's been a will to fix things, which Lampley mentioned in that conversation many years back. But that push, he added, will get "confounded by business circumstances that tempt everyone to do the wrong thing."

Money, in other words, has held boxing back. But in Amazon, there's now a boxing partner with seemingly limitless amounts of it and in a prime (sorry) position to change things.

Will 2024 be the start of boxing's road back?

Scott Stinson is a former national sports columnist for Postmedia News.