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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Boxing Tickets Still a Hot Commodity



When I heard that the Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. fight was going to happen, I was probably more excited about boxing than I had ever been in my life. Then it was devastating to find out that the organizers couldn't work out the logistics of it and the fight will not happen.

The reality of the matter is that I would not have even attempted to find boxing tickets for the match, because they likely would have been gone before I could even bid on any, and quite frankly, I probably could not have afforded them even if I had gotten the chance to bid.

Boxing tickets are still a very hot commodity, and the sport itself is far from dead, contrary to what some sports personalities would have the general public believe.

One of the biggest reasons for the decline in pay-per-view purchases for boxing matches is because of the growing popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and mixed martial arts in general. I am a big mixed martial arts fan, and I know that if I order a UFC event on pay-per-view, I am going to get several good match-ups of guys that are actually going to go out there and fight.

With boxing, you will usually get better matches on the undercard, and oftentimes the fighters in the main event really don't seem to get after it the way they should. That, after all, is the reason I spent $50 on a pay-per-view event or spent even more on boxing tickets in the first place.

Now, don't get me wrong; I am a big boxing fan. I grew up in the time of great fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran. Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson were among the great heavyweights I remember watching on a regular basis. Boxing tickets were a commodity then, but the fact remains that they are still hot today.

I will see boxing tickets selling for hundreds, even thousands of dollars online, and scalpers can usually get even more money from them. The odd thing about that for me is, there don't seem to be nearly as many interesting fighters out there as there once were.

The Klitchko brothers can be fun to watch, and of course, Manny is great, but a guy that constantly brags about being the greatest fighter of this era, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., is to me a rather boring fighter to watch. Yet, boxing tickets to his matches will sell for as much as thousands of dollars, and he earns in the tens of millions for fighting.

Opinions vary about fighters, but one things seems to remain a constant with the sport, and that is that boxing tickets continue to be a hot item, and from the looks of things, always will be.