If there were ever any remaining doubts that boxing, once among the nation’s most popular sports, has lost its importance and impact it’s the fact over the weekend a heavyweight championship bout occurred and it got less attention than the NBA and NHL playoffs, regular season baseball, the PGA championship, pretty much everything else happening. Making things even more depressing for what few boxing fans remain is that it was a historic fight. Oleksandr Usyk, a left-hander from the Ukraine, defeated Tyson Fury in a split decision that according to the reporters who covered it was a great 12-round bout. Usyk took a split decision over the previously unbeaten Fury.
The added significance was in winning Usyk consolidated all the belts in the heavyweight division for the first time in 25 years. He added Fury’s WBC title to the IBF, WBA, WBO and Ring Magazine versions that were already in his possession. There was a time when a heavyweight title match with any belt on the line would have been the lead item in sports sections on television and in newspapers. This fight wasn’t even in the United States or Europe, but in Saudi Arabia. It occurred in the wee hours of the morning so it could be shown on prime time here for the pay-per-view audience, the last remaining place where boxing matches are even shown.
In another era Usyk would be a global celebrity. He had over 300 wins when he was an amateur, winning both World Championship and Olympic gold medals. He turned professional in 2013 and became a cruiserweight world champion in just his 10th fight. Usyk eventually defeated three world titleholders on enemy territory to emerge as the first undisputed champion since Evander Holyfield in 1988.
After moving from cruiserweight to heavyweight he posted two routine wins before being matched with then-unified champion Anthony Joshua. Despite giving away almost 30 pounds, Usyk outpointed him not once but twice to claim IBF, WBA, WBO and Ring Magazine championships.
The final target was Fury’s WBC belt, and it took a long time to finally get the two together. His Excellency Turki Al-Sheikh presented Riyadh Season as a saving grace, which provided the requisite financial package to make both teams happy. From a publicity standpoint, the fight early Sunday morning was the best heavyweight championship bout since Fury’s 11th-round knockout of Deontay Wilder in 2021.Usyk won despite giving up six inches in height, seven in reach, and 40 pounds in weight. So after only 22 professional fights, Usyk now owns boxing’s most coveted title, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
Yet it’s a good bet the average sports fan has never heard of him, or for that matter knew anything about Fury. Today Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) rules supreme on such channels as ESPN, which routinely carries extensive MMA cards, and even has an MMA highlights show plus regular MMA correspondents.
It certainly wasn’t always that way regarding boxing. Anyone who grew up in the ‘50s, 60s or ‘70s remembers the heyday of the great heavyweight fights, and a time when you could see all types of boxing matches on various networks. There was a time when boxing was not only shown on broadcast TV but on both HBO and Showtime. But all of them have now abandoned the sport. Golden Gloves tournaments don’t attract the participation they once did in the amateur ranks either, and the USA has had a tough time finding enough boxers to put together an Olympic team.
No one can argue with the medical information that has been released over the past few decades detailing the damage boxing does to fighters. That cliche about the broke, punch-drunk fighter who can’t even remember his name has proven true a few too many times for lots of sports fans. The only boxing match that’s really gotten much attention lately is one that’s more spectacle than legitimate fight. That’s the upcoming whatever one wants to call it featuring 57-year-old Mike Tyson going up against 27-year-old Jake Paul on July 20 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. That’s actually being streamed on Netflix, and will be the streaming network’s third live sporting event following the Netflix Cup and the Netflix Slam.
That the sport which was once the province of great champions like Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Leonard, and many others is currently presenting fiascos like this one shows how far down in the sporting world boxing has fallen. It’s a shame also for Oleksandr Usyk, whom many are touting as one of the greatest fighters to emerge in the contemporary era. His exploits will only be known to the tiny number of sports fans who still care enough about boxing to take it seriously, even when it resorts to carnival spectacles like the upcoming Tyson/Paul bout.
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