The Hot Take - The Time for Tournaments is now!

6/27/2020

Over the last couple of weeks we have seen Top Rank become the first US promoter to step up to the plate and offer some boxing. Sadly the shows have failed, massively, to connect with the general populace and the ratings are, if we're being honest, pathetic. Especially given the fact there is no other live sport on to compete with boxing.

Whilst we can all understand their being no big bouts on at the moment, with reduced money in the sport, lower TV, no fans, and lower advertising revenue, we do need to question whether there are things promoters can do to make people care more about the fights than they currently are.

One of the problems with boxing is the story telling aspect of the sport.

We often get given a story about the rising hopeful and their hard life. It's something to make us feel a connection to one of the fighters and sell them to us. Sadly however that paints a story that attempts to make us feel sympathetic to the massive favourite rather than telling us a story to paint the fight. Boxing is, for all intents, the only sport where the story of the favourite is the only story given to a neutral fan. The fan is meant to buy in to the event, not just one participant fighter, before the fight. Instead the marketing for boxing is very much about buying into the house fighter, the big favourite.

Just imagine, if you can, a sports channel trying to sell you a match up between Liverpool and San Jose Earthquakes, or the Kansas City Chiefs and the Toronto Argonauts...and then tried to make you feel sympathy for the bigger team.

If ESPN is going to run stories about one of the fighters, during their live broadcast, they should look to run stories on both fighters. Get the casual and neutrals to buy in to both men, rather than continue the narrative that is currently being pushed. Afte all who wants to see a bout between "this future superstar you're telling me is amazing and this other fella who you've told me nothing about". That however can be tricky and really quite awkward, taking up more of the broadcast than it needs to.

Another option, an option we see working well in Asia, is tournament boxing. Give the fans a reason to buy in and to follow a story they can see being weaved in front of their faces, over a number of months. This not only leads to short term story telling that the fans can see being told but, when the sport can resumes normal service, their will be a fighter at the end of it with a lot of extra added value.

Recently we saw Clay Collard pick up his latest upset win, beating David Kaminsky. If their 6 rounder, along with 7 other bouts spread over the next few weeks, was part of a 16 man tournament over the next 6 to 12 months fans would begin buying in early and want to follow their man through out. The eventual winner would then have fans for the sports return.

With the bouts on these shows, for the most part, being 4 and 6 rounders a fighter could, in theory, fight 3 or 4 times between now and the end of the year. Heck Collard's fight was his 4th since November, and if fans keep seeing the same names winning they will begin to care.

For us tournaments are also an easy sell to fans and something boxing, in the west, doesn't have enough of. In the East they are done regularly, with things like Rookie of the Year, the B Class tournaments and the recent KO Dynamite, God's Left Bantamweight and Hajime No Ippo 20th anniversary tournaments in Japan.

It's not just Japan however and Korea has it's own Rookie of the Year tournaments, Thailand had a brilliant little tournament last year dubbed "The Fighter", which has helped launch 16 year old Phoobadin Yoohanngoh into a regional title fight, and China hosts Major League Boxing and the Silk Road tournaments.

Of course the WBSS and the World Boxing Super Series have both helped launch careers internationally, proving their is interest in tournaments at the highest level in the west. Our guess is that interest will also work lower down the sports levels.

It's clear that the current format doesn't work, the only people really tuning in are hardcore fans, so why not take the opportunity to try something different, give the lesser fighters a reason to fight and give fans a reason to care.

By all means keep the "co-feature, under-card bouts, feature" running order, which is something I'll admit I'm a fan of, but make those under-card bouts matter. Put those bouts as preliminary bouts to a tournament, market the tournament, rather than the fighters, and make people care about getting into the story at the beginning rather than in middle, or the end.

It's clearer now, more than ever, that Top Rank doesn't have the star power among their prospects to carry the number of shows they are planning. and it feels like they missed a trick here.

Whilst it seems unlikely Top Rank will run with a longer form tournament, especially with all the issues that boxing has, a short format, either an 8 man 1-night tournament such as "Prizefighter" in the UK, or a 4 man knockout tournament, could still work and could have helped the sport capture the attention of fans when they needed them tuning in.

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Whilst I'm on a bit of a rant I also can't help but feel the whole ESPN broadcast needs a shake up. Timothy Bradley and Andre Ward have been awful, so bad they've been making Joe Tessitore look fantastic. It would be nice to hear only one of the two former fighters, working as part of a 2-person booth. What Chris Algieri and Crystina Poncher are doing for the international broadcasts is fantastic, they sound like a coherent unit, not always agreeing but coherent. The current ESPN set up is a mess of in fight narratives and too many voices. It needs streamlining, and people need to just calm it will make the whole thing a lot, lot easier to watch.

We also need to see the judging pick up. We can understand a bit of rustiness but some of the scoring has been truly atrocious. Patricia Morse Jarman having Kaminsky beating Collard, Dave Moretti having Joshua Greer Jr level with Mike Plania and Eric Cheek splitting Cameron Krael and Bobirzhan Mominov by a single point. Come on folks sort that out, there isn't enough fights for you folk to ruin the results!

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20 Predictions for 2020: PREDICTION number 16 - WBSS Season 3 to feature a smaller weight class

12/20/2019

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As we head towards a new year we've decided to look into our glass balls, our tea leaves and our palms to come up with 20 predictions which will be posted over the coming weeks for what we think will happen in 2020. So far our predictions haven't been the best though they've not all been wrong.

In 2013 we predicted that Naoya Inoue, his brother Takuma and Kosei Tanaka would all win world titles. Between them they've won a few world titles, though Takuma has yet to win a proper world title. That same year we also predicted a growth in Chinese boxing, and this arguably happened despite the fact the Macau side of things has died off. We also predicted a growth in Asian fighters making a name for themselves in the US, this was before Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, Naoya Inoue or Kazuto Ioka had fought on US soil, and before the wave of Uzbek's had began to attract US attention.

Unlike the past, where we have made all of our predictions in 1 article, we'll be spreading these ones out with 1 prediction per article, and going more in depth than we have in the past.

PREDICTION number 16 - WBSS Season 3 to feature a smaller weight class
Recently we predicted more tournaments, and have regularly confessed our love of tournaments and what they stand for in boxing. Be it tournaments at the very highest level, such as the WBSS of the lower level, with novice tournaments like Rookie of the Year, we love the idea behind tournament boxing. We know their has been issues with Season 2 of the WBSS, with rumoured financial struggles, and pretty obvious issues with scheduling, which almost every finalist has complained about, but in the end the tournaments at 140lbs and 118lbs both delivered. They may not have been as smooth as we'd have all liked, but they were worth the wait!

Given the eventual successes of the WBSS Season 2 finals, and the eventual linking up of WBSS and Sky Sports in the UK, we're expecting a third season and it makes sense for the team behind WBSS to again try to build the brand across various geographical fan bases. In Season 2 we had the Bantamweight tournament involving fighters from Japan, Australia, Puerto Rico, the UK, South Africa, Russia, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. Amazingly 8 different countries were accounted for by the nationality of the fighters and all 8 men were entering the competition with the belief they could win.

We could have something very similar if we again allowed the little men to shine. For example at Flyweight we could easily end up with Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Philippines, China and Pakistan. Or at Light Flyweight, arguably the best division for a WBSS tournament, we could have fighters from Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Cuba, South Africa, Panama, Nicaragua and Venezuela all mixing.

The lower weight classes are also, financially, less risky, and promotionally probably more simple. The fighters get paid less, so will expect less, their promoters are typically less about games and more about making names. Fighters like Kenshiro Teraji, Carlos Canizales, Hiroto Kyoguchi and Felix Alvarado, all at Light Flyweight, and Flyweights like Kosei Tanaka, Moruti Mthalane, Cristofer Rosales and Muhammad Waseem, have all looked to increase their name recognition in one way or another. Having them in global tournaments would be huge for their profiles.

The best thing about tournaments in these lower weights is that they could be much, much easier to stage. If the WBSS team worked with the bigger promoters in Japan, like Watanabe, Teiken and Hatanaka, the shows could, in theory, essentially feature 2, if not 4, of the knockout bouts in 1 super show, or 2 smaller yet still great shows. This would make scheduling things a little bit easier.

Imagine, if you will, a spring card featuring 4 quarter-final bouts for one tournament, a summer card with the semi-finals and then a winter show with the finals in. It would be clear, coherent, and clean. It would be simple to follow, and within 12 months we would have found out who the best fighter in a division is.

Alternatively 2 shows for the quarter finals on back to back weekends, the semi finals on the same as each other then the final.

We can't get that type of thing in the higher weights, where ego and promotional conflicts cause issues, but in the lower weights this is a possibility, and a money saving one. One that doesn't involve as many moving parts, such as booking double the venues and working on double the TV dates.

We predict that one of the lower weights, and more specifically a weight class below Bantamweight, will be run in the next WBSS. We would prefer the Light Flyweight division to the Flyweight one, but either would be great. The division won't appeal to the US audience necessarily, but given the reception the "Drama in Saitama" got it's obvious the US doesn't need to be the primary target for the WBSS. If the march ups are good enough, and the promotional work is strong enough, and the narrative is clear enough, fans, world wide, will care.

Also some of the money saved by doing the little guys could be invested in to some shoulder programming, to try and educate the wider boxing audience about the fighters involved, their stories, their styles and their ambitions. There is a whole market out there for for fans who simply haven't been exposed to the little guys and the WBSS has the power to change that.

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20 Predictions for 2020: PREDICTION number 15 - Tournaments Galore!

12/18/2019

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Prediction number 15 - Tournaments Galore!
One thing that we have seen a lot of in 2019 is boxing tournaments. We've had the WBSS, as well as Rookie tournaments, the God's Left Tournament, the Knockout Dynamite Tournament, the Hajime No Ippo tournament, The Fighter in Thailand, the Ultimate Boxing Series in the Philippines and MTK's Golden Contract tournaments. What all these tournaments have done is deliver excitement and action.

None of the bigger tournaments have been flawless, with the WBSS scheduling being one of the most frustrating things about boxing in 2019, but all of them have had great bouts, interesting match ups and been worth following. That is the key.

For too long boxing shows have been sold on the main event and little else. There hasn't been a reason to care about a whole show very often, but in tournaments, such as the Rookie of the Year, there is a reason to care about every bout. As a fan you can follow a longer narrative, a story that goes past today and into the future. A story you can emotionally invest in, especially if the fighter has had to dig deep to get to the next round.

Even in case where a tournament "goes wrong" we can still invest, with Nonito Donaire's route to the WBSS Bantamweight final giving us a story, that made Donaire seem lucky and like he didn't deserve to be in the final, but he put on one of his career best performances, showing he really did belong there. In fact watching Donaire's final in the WBSS there's a good chance he had more than enough in the tank to have gotten there on merit, even if he had had to go through a fully fit Ryan Burnett and Zolani Tete.

Tournaments, if done right, can sell not only themselves, and the fighters involved, but also a longer term boxing story. They give us a reason to care, about more than just a one off fight.

Whilst tournaments come with their own issues, such as injury, weight problems, scheduling, they do add structure to boxing and that is something the sport could do with having more off. Something rigid, something to work off of. Something that gives us something to build from.

As you can probably tell, we are fans of tournaments, and hopefully we'll see a bigger variety of them pop up, each with their own identity. The WBSS tournaments are clearly about finding the best fighters in the world in a particularly division, the Rookie of the Year tournaments are clearly to help bring novices into the sport and get them some attention. The Knockout Dynamite Tournament was a smart and unique 5 round idea with a bonus structure to encourage knockouts. The sport can also have more 1 night tournaments, like the Prize Fighter Tournaments, a tournament to find contenders for titles, like the old Strongest Korakuen tournaments, more B class tournaments, title determination tournaments to fill vacancies and so much more.

Not every tournament needs a flashy name, just a good concept, good match ups, a reason for fighters to want to win and a reason for fans to care.

We predict that we will see more tournaments in 2020, with various tournaments in Asia. A 1-night tournament at Korakuen Hall would be great, as would ESPN5 getting on board with a 1-night tournament in the Philippines. Maybe even a tournament of tournaments, with various countries all running tournaments to find their participant in a wide regional competition.

There are hundreds of options for promoters to work with, and we feel the tournament market in professional boxing is very much an untapped market, and one that copuld be cracked wide open in 2020.

(Image courtesy of boxmob.jp)

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The Hot Take - The Time for Tournaments is now!

20 Predictions for 2020: PREDICTION number 16 - WBSS Season 3 to feature a smaller weight class

20 Predictions for 2020: PREDICTION number 15 - Tournaments Galore!

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