When I worked at Ring magazine, then-editor-in-chief Nigel Collins had three words he would frequently bust out in editorial meetings when the staff would grapple with how to fill the pages: “Fights and fighters.”
It was a simple shorthand for the idea that boxing fans who bought boxing magazines for the most part wanted to read about, ya know, boxing. Not that we should ignore purse bids or site fees or lawsuits or managerial contracts – they’re a part of the sport, and coverage that doesn’t encompass such inner workings would be incomplete. But, when in doubt, when trying to decide what to focus on, when determining what the feature stories would be or who was going on the magazine’s cover…
“Fights and fighters.”
There was logic to it then. There is logic to it now.
I’m not confident it was entirely correct then. I’m less confident it’s entirely correct now.
Gradually, over the last couple of decades, there has been a shift in how fans consume sports coverage and how they talk about sports. There was always going to be a segment fired up to debate, say, whether Shaq was carrying Kobe or Kobe was carrying Shaq. But increasingly, there’s a segment just as fired up to explain the NBA’s “luxury tax” and the “second apron” and use that (mundane to most) knowledge to tell you what (germane to most) player transactions are and aren’t possible.
That shift is coming to a head in boxing with the reality that the Saudi Arabian government now pulls the weightiest levers in the sport – and specifically with the double-bylined New York Times story last week that the Saudi sovereign wealth fund was on the verge of a deal with UFC-owner TKO to start a boxing league, as had been rumored and reported throughout the back half of 2024.
The article had all the sensational names you could ever want to cram into what was ostensibly a sports story: not just Turki Alalshikh and Dana White, but also Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Mohammed bin Salman – along with references to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, LIV golf, Meta, WWE, TKO parent company Endeavor, the Republican National Convention, the World Cup, ESPN, and the Muhammad Ali Act.
There was a passing reference to Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury, but otherwise the article didn’t name a single active boxer.
And I have little doubt the story drew far more eyeballs than a hypothetical postfight “gamer” on Jai Opetaia’s latest successful defense of the cruiserweight title would have.
Actually, those examples don’t quite align. The more meaningful comparison would be the audience for the Saudi/TKO story vs. the audience for an Usyk-Fury II postfight story. And the more pertinent question as it pertains to the “fights and fighters” ethos is which of those two topics hardcore boxing fans care more about; certainly, the mainstream folks who don’t watch fights are more likely to click on the headline that mentions Saudi Arabia “Pumping Money into Boxing.”
But the fact that I’m not entirely sure whether diehard fight fans are more interested in reading about Usyk vs. Fury or about White teaming up with Turki tells you how much things have evolved.
Do boxing fans want to get bogged down in the business details? Do they care who’s spending how much on what? Do they care where the money is coming from or how despicable any of the people involved are? Or do they not care about any of that, as long as they’re getting the fights they want?
And it’s not just “do they?” It’s also “should they?”
The athletic side of things definitely does not exist in a vacuum. It intermingles with the business side of things, the political side of things, the moral side of things. It always has, of course. But some 25 or 30 years ago, the above questions were easy enough to answer in a way that led us to centering coverage on “fight and fighters.” They’re not as easy to answer in 2025.
You see the split among readers every time one of us writers, at BoxingScene or elsewhere, calls attention to the negatives of the Saudi takeover of boxing. The audience is very much polarized.
Some believe you can’t mention the Saudi money without mentioning sportswashing, or that any reference to Dana White needs to come with a note about him publicly slapping his wife and the widely held belief that the UFC underpays its athletes.
Others push back on such negativity and feel as long as the money is funding the boxing matches fans want to see, nothing else matters.
“Fights and fighters” was a relatively positive way to express what later became the aggressive cry of “stick to sports” – or its more elitist, condescending cousin, “shut up and dribble.” Undoubtedly, the “fights and fighters” mindset is still out there. But the appetite for outside-the-ring information and analysis has significantly swelled.
The publication Sports Business Journal has been around since 1994, so, again, public interest in the behind-the-scenes dealings is not a brand new phenomenon. But it keeps spreading, right up through CNBC launching a sports business vertical last summer.
It aligns somewhat with the rise of fantasy sports, which lets fans play the role of general manager, drafting their teams, making trades, working within salary caps, etc. And sports video games all seem to now feature “career mode,” giving users long-term investment as they make their virtual GM maneuvers.
Look, I don’t care about some NFL player’s stat-based financial incentives when he signs his contract – but I do care when it’s the final week of the season and I know he needs 85 receiving yards to earn an extra $3 million, and I can make wagers and build fantasy lineups incorporating that information.
Some fans truly want to know about all the business details. Others perk up only when those dealings bleed directly into the sports product. For example: Will Top Rank and ESPN re-up their partnership? Please spare me the details of lawyers and executives squabbling over decimal points – but please do let me know when a deal is or isn’t done, so that I know if I need to keep paying for ESPN+ or cancel that and switch to some other streaming service.
Along similar lines, every boxing fan wants to know when a major fight gets signed. When is it happening? Where is it happening? Is it on pay-per-view? These facts are all entirely relevant to the fan experience.
But how many fans want to be apprised of each little breaking, anonymously sourced update that a contract has been faxed, or that a revised contract has been faxed back, or that there’s a sticking point over the acceptable brands of gloves? Some fans crave every last bit of that information, it seems. But I personally get nothing out of knowing incremental developments that may or may not be reversed in the next update. For me, everything between “this fight is in the works” and “this fight is signed” elicits a yawn.
I don’t speak for everyone, though. Boxing social media is littered with people who are fans or haters of specific promotional companies. There are people who root for Premier Boxing Champions, the business entity, the way I root for the Philadelphia Eagles, and there are people who hate on PBC and all boxers under its umbrella the way I hate on the Dallas Cowboys and all players who don their uniform. Me “rooting for laundry,” as Jerry Seinfeld would say, is weird to some; them rooting for boxing promoters should be weird to everyone – but is indicative of the way that the “fights and fighters” approach does not align with every single fan’s wants and needs.
In the internet age, in which a site like BoxingScene is expected to crank out new headlines every hour or two, you simply can’t cover the sport without emphasizing the business side. There aren’t enough fights to preview and review and fighters to interview and profile day in and day out to produce enough content to satisfy the gods of churn. So, to some extent, the move to expand coverage beyond “fights and fighters” is one borne of necessity, as we’re no longer in the age of newspapers commissioning one or two boxing articles a week or magazines planning out five features a month.
In other words, you can’t stick to “fights and fighters” anymore. Boxing business coverage is part of the package, whether an individual reader scrolls right past it or lives to soak up every detail.
That said, “fights and fighters” are still the point of following the sport.
I hate that before the final pitch of the World Series has been thrown, half the media is already focused on “hot stove” season, speculating on the offseason activities while the most important games are still being played. It’s OK to care about more than just the athletic endeavor – but not at the expense of enjoying the athletic endeavor.
The punches landed, the punches missed, the chins checked, the warriors decked – that’s still what’s at the heart of it all. If you’re more interested in reading about filings and filers than about fights and fighters, you may need to rethink why you’re watching boxing in the first place.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].
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