One of the biggest aspects of combat sports at the moment is the rise of ‘influencer boxing’. Starting back in 2018 with KSI vs Joe Weller it’s been a divisive phenomenon, taking crazy amounts of money on PPVs and selling out arenas. Some people think it’s great for the sport, others see it as a cancerous freak show. What do I think? Not to cop out, but it’s complicated…
What Is It?
First of all, the parameters of what it actually is have been shifting as it’s grown in popularity. What started as rival content creators having amateur fights to settle real or contrived ‘beefs’, has spiralled into ‘professional’ fights involving ‘professional’ fighters. Granted, these are not fighters at the peak of a boxing career - a retired boxer turned politician (Acelino Freitas), MMA fighters (Tyron Woodley, Anderson Silva and Nate Diaz), a Love Island boxer (Tommy Fury)… and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
YouTube vs YouTube
To take the early stages first, rival YouTubers duking it out. It’s certainly not boxing as a technical sport. But it does attract huge audiences. I can’t see that there’s all that much difference between this and White Collar Boxing, where you can go from never having boxed in your life to stepping into the ring after eight to ten weeks of intensive training and having a fight against someone of a similar calibre. The issue then must be the enormous crowds and vast amount of money on offer?
A common complaint levelled at these events is that the fighters haven’t earned these big paydays, haven’t worked their way up through the ranks of boxing and put in the shift like any other boxer. But in a way, they have, just not in this sport. YouTubers don’t exist in a vacuum, they’ve had to build up their fan base from the bottom, whether you consider what they do ‘work’ or not, they’ve still done it. Surely how they then choose to use that audience is up to them?
Bringing In New Fans
The big defence for influencer boxing is that it’s bringing a whole new generation of fans to the sweet science. Is it? It’s hard to tell whether someone will watch say, WingsOfRedemption vs Boogie2988 and be inspired to trawl back through classic boxing matches of the past.
But during lockdown, I had a guy come to start learning boxing with me. He was young and shy, so to build rapport I asked him who his favourite boxer was - he said KSI. I was secretly and snobbishly appalled, but nearly three years on that same guy is still boxing, kickboxing and weight training, not to mention that his parents have taken up exercise as well. So although he shows no interest in watching the sport, he’s got into an activity that makes him personally fitter and more confident, and which he enjoys. That’s a win in my book, and all thanks to influencer boxing.
Whether or not new fans are watching boxing, are they doing it? Because if they are, that seems enough for me. We complain that kids today are less healthy, more obese and more brainless than ‘in my day’, that they watch pointless YouTubers doing pointless things rather than going outdoors and getting some exercise. But now those same YouTubers, the same role models we’ve decried, are dipping their toes into a physical, beneficial sport and potentially encouraging their fans to do the same, and we castigate them for not doing it right. Seems a little hypocritical…
Levels Of Disrespect
Where I draw the line is when no respect is shown for the sport. When OnlyFans model Daniella Helmsley beat Ms Danielka (an influencer), she chose to celebrate by exposing her breasts to the crowd and cameras. Can this be anything but disrespectful to the brilliant female boxers out there, particularly after Clarissa Shields and Savannah Marshall headlined the first ever all-female card at the O2 less than a year before? Similarly, KSI fighting rapper Swarmz and ‘professional’ Luis Pineda both in the same night makes a mockery of the idea of leaving it all in the ring.
Even so, as long as it’s between influencers, it can be dismissed as simply not boxing, just entertainment. But when actual fighters are wheeled out, it feels a little more exploitative. Anderson Silva, Tyron Woodley and Nate Diaz were legends in their sport of MMA, and now they’ve lost to Jake Paul. The Evander Holyfield exhibition against Vitor Belfort was a heart wrenching tragedy, a once great fighter reduced to a shell of his past glory making a spectacle of himself in front of a baying crowd. It whiffs of a spoilt right kid paying premier league footballers to have a kick about with him in his back yard because he can. Dance monkey, dance…
The GOAT
The exception to this is Floyd Mayweather Jr. Undisputedly one of the best to ever box, his last professional fight was against MMA champion Connor McGregor. He’s fought several ‘freak’ fights since retiring, against a kickboxer, YouTube personalities, MMA fighters and John Gotti’s grandson. In doing so, he’s never looked under pressure, and has earned a staggering amount of money, including a reported $9 million for his match against Tenshin Nasukawa, which he won in 150 seconds. Money is very much talking in these events, and Mayweather is raking it in with both hands, rising contemptuously above the system that’s trying to exploit him.
Cash Rules
And that’s what it comes down to really. These influencers have money, they have fans, and like it or not they have star power. Yes it’s cringeworthy watching them swatting ineffectually at each other in a ring, showing no technique whatsoever. But people pay to see it, and boxing is a business. Yes it’s tragic watching legends of the fight game used as tools to increase some jumped up personality’s clout, but if you’ve spent your career putting your life on the line, and are then offered more money than you’ve earned in a lifetime for one exhibition, why on earth would you turn it down? Legacies don’t pay the bills.
Conclusion
Ultimately, boxing is more achievable for the average joe than MMA, and less likely to cause accidental serious injury. And it does have a major problem, in that it can’t necessarily provide the fights people want to see. Look at the current heavyweight division. What a draw would it have been for an all-English unification fight to go ahead in Joshua vs Fury, or even Joshua vs Wilder back when they had the belts split between them. Today, we’re so close and yet so far from Fury vs Usyk. But we rarely get those match-ups. People want to see big fights between big stars, and until boxing sorts that out, there will be a place for Fury vs Ngannou, or even KSI vs Tommy Fury. And if even a handful of regular people are lacing up gloves who would otherwise never have stepped into a boxing gym, and are willing to learn the values of hard work, respect and honour that should be the cornerstones of combat, who are we to complain? They may have come to it in an unconventional way, but come to it they have.