Mourning a Tough Year and Hoping for a Better One

Mourning a tough year and hoping for a better one By Norm Frauenheim- One year ends and another begins in a couple of days amid regrets and grief from the last 12 months and a wellspring of hope for something better in 2017. It’s been a year to mourn, remembered mostly for who and what boxing lost. Legends are gone. Goodbye, Muhammad Ali, Aaron Pryor and Howard Bingham. Their deaths are powerful symbols of an era that has passed. The business long sustained itself on Ali, Bingham’s poignant photographs of him and great fighters who followed in a generation personified in part by Pryor. Where does it go from here? Who knows? At 85, former Ali promoter Bob Arum is optimistic. Throughout the last year, Arum’s consistent theme was the sports’ international look and reach. The business has always been international, of course. History’s great moments have played out all over the globe. There was Africa for Ali’s epic victory over George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. There was Manila for Ali’s rematch in a triumph of courage, will and skill over the late Joe Frazier. But the fighters were American. That’s what has changed. Today, they are from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev and Vasyl Lomachenko are as skilled as anyone in today’s generation. But can they draw? Does anybody in the American audience care? Ratings and pay-per-view numbers from 2016 say no. Home Box Office’s PPV number, a reported 160,000, for Andre Ward’s controversial scorecard victory over Kovalev in November was a disappointment, even in the face of modest expectations. The light-heavyweight fight was thought to be the biggest in a year made barren by further, frustrating delays in a Canelo Alvarez-Golovkin showdown. Ward was the American end of the marketing equation. He was the last American to win an Olympic gold medal. He’s unbeaten and he was moving up in weight after dominating the super- middleweight division. Yet, not even his resume moved the meter. Perhaps, it will in 2017 in a rematch mandated by a contract clause already exercised by Kovalev. Perhaps, it’ll be the second step in a trilogy. Fundamentals for a rivalry are in place. Yet, questions about whether either Ward or Kovalev can ever draw an audience linger. Maybe, the problem rests in the pay-per-view business model, which collapsed after Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao squeezed every last dollar out of it in their dud of a bout in May 2015. Boxing isn’t dying, but pay-per-view might be. Junior- welterweight Terence Crawford, emerging welterweight Errol Spence and the return of lightweight Mikey Garcia are just three reasons to think there’s still some life in the American end of the business. Meanwhile, most of next year’s business figures to get done in the UK. From Belfast featherweight Carl Frampton and his Jan. 28 rematch of a victory over Leo Santa Cruz in Las Vegas to heavyweight future Anthony Joshua and his April 29 Wembley Stadium showdown with Wladimir Klitschko, the UK has the stars and an audience that wants to see them. UK fans also travel. They were there in Vegas, for Ricky Hatton, first against Mayweather and then Pacquiao. For Frampton-Santa Cruz II, they’ll be back, but this time with an unquenchable thirst for Guinness. Imagine the UK crowd that would follow Joshua to Vegas. Arum is right. Potential for a huge rebound is there. But a few things have to happen. First and foremost, there’s Golovkin-Canelo, which Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya promises will happen in September. Then, there’s Ward-Kovalev II, perhaps sometime in late spring or early summer. Above all, there has to be a way that GGG, Kovalev and Lomachenko can be transformed into names that fans know and personalities with whom they can identify. Without all three, it’ll be hard to have a Happy New Year..

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