I don’t mean that kind of “fix”. I mean “fix” as in “repair”.
I don’t watch boxing nearly as much as I used to. At one time I would have considered myself a fan. For the last seven years or so I’ve sort of ditched boxing for the UFC. The fights are more active and the outcomes less predictable. Boxing is losing lots of fans to MMA fighting.
Just in case, I TiVo’d Saturday’s Jermain Taylor / Kelly Pavlik fight and watched it tonight. Wow. The other fight HBO showed was between Andre Berto and David Estrada. I won’t give away the results to either, but if you can catch the replay they are both great, entertaining fights. It reminded me how great boxing can be.
Anyway, I think I know how to fix boxing. Some promoter besides Don King should offer former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell a few million dollars to fight a big name boxer. He’ll take it, partly because he lost his last two fights and partly because the UFC doesn’t pay anywhere near that kind of money.
How does it benefit boxing? He’ll lose. Badly
Liddell is considered one of the UFC’s hardest punchers, but watch the two fights I’m talking about here if you really want to see some guys hit hard. Throw in the fact that his pure boxing skills are nowhere near those top notch professional boxers, and it hardly seems fair.
Boxing will gain a lot of credibility with younger fans, and the buy rate for the pay per view would be tremendous. I’d buy it.
