08.06.08 – By James Barlow: What is it with the lack of coverage of boxing in the U.K? Last month on the 30th of May British Heavy weight champion Danny Williams traveled to Germany to take on the supposed up and coming German heavy weight prospect Konstantin Airich. On the under card former British two time Heavyweight champion and now current W.B.C international cruiser weight champion Herbie Hide defended his title against Ehinomen Ehikhamenor. Both fighters were victorious.. But had you watched any UK sports channels or read any national newspapers I doubt you would have even knew they had fought!
As an avid boxing fan it really annoys me the way this countries press ignores boxing. Im not saying that Williams and Hide deserve main stage on the back page of the national newspapers but they deserve some kind of coverage. Last night Vernon Forrest’s fight against Sergio Mora and Paul Williams’s victory against Carols Quintana were not shown on either sky sports or Setanta Sports. These fights not being shown are just the tip of the ice berg though and regularly big fights that happen in American are given no coverage in the British press. I have this morning read the Star newspaper to see a little one column article in the sports section letting me know that Floyd Mayweather had retired! A one column article is apparently all the space the greatest boxing star of this generation deserves. If Maywether was totally unknown in the U.K I could maybe begrudgingly accept this. But that fact that our biggest star Ricky Hatton fought in a mega fight late last year grossing millions of pounds and is hunting for a re match makes Mayweathers retirement quite significant, even for those just interested in Hatton rather than boxing on a whole. I’d say from the amount of people packed into Eastlands in Manchester this would make them a fair few.
I speak to a lot of guys here in England who say that back in the 80’s and early 90’s they were avid boxing fans. The careers of Benn, Eubank and Bruno are etched on the back of most working class mans brains with fond memories of watching these legendary fighters battle it out on the big screen in their local boozers. But not just British fighters are mentioned. Hagler, Hearns, Leonard, Tyson and Duran are all household names. But they don’t know the first thing about boxing these days and most can’t even name any of the current heavy weight champions.
Football or Soccer as the Americans wrongly call it is always going to be the number one sport in the U.K. But it amazes me when I see athletics being shown free to watch (because no one else wants to broadcast it) on the B.B.C with a straggle of people in the stands compared to 50,000 people attending a Ricky Hatton fight. Yet the British press dedicates much more newspaper space to athletics and other minor sports than it does to boxing. There’s some mega fights coming up, but I doubt the Cotto V Margarito fight will get much of a mention in our press even though its one of the biggest fights on the planet. The British press’ attitude seems to be if a fight does not have a Calzaghe or Hatton name linked to it is not worth printing. At the time of writing this article it looks like Abraham V Miranda and Chagaev V Valuev will not be broadcast in the U.K either.
The thing that really annoys me is that in my opinion this has been a boom time for boxing with some brilliant fights been and being made. Yet here in the U.K you would think that compared to years gone by boxing has died and is now just for the die hard fan. I’d love to see more boxing being shown on the sports channels and more coverage in the press. I really believe that if the press covered it more the British public would be more interested and would watch a lot more boxing.
With the invention of Sky plus, just in my group of friends, I have noticed they are taking more of a interest in the sport as they can easily record in and watch it when convenient. Sky and Setanta should make more of an effort to bring ALL of the top fights to our screens too. I just hope thing improve in the future for the good of the sport.