HALL OR NOTHING
KO threat to small shows
BOXING is facing up to financial disaster if the sport can’t return to arenas in 2020.
And the likelihood that it won’t come back this year is striking fear into the hearts of those at ground level.
It’s beginning to seem more likely that fight crowds won’t return until a coronavirus vaccine is widely available.
That could be as long as 18 months away, which could wreck the small-hall side of the sweet science which props up the sport.
Dr Zach Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said recently that 60,000 fans at a football match would be “very, very dangerous”.
So even 5,000 people in a sweaty, intimate venue has to be somewhere near dangerous. Boxing is set to return behind closed doors as leading promoters fight hard to get their boxers back in action and, more importantly, paid.
Frank Warren is eyeing up bouts at BT Sport’s studios, while Eddie Hearn’s plans for a six-week boxing bonanza continue to be put in place.
Both promoters are due plenty of praise for working tirelessly to find ways to get the sport back moving once they get the green light from the British Boxing Board of Control.
But it is those further down the food chain who have real fears that the landscape of the sport has changed forever.
Promoters with TV backing can put on events for a few months without crowds.
And if it really gets bad, then, they can turn to payper-view fighters to clash in front of no fans but plenty of paying customers in the comfort – and safety – of their own living rooms.
Hearn isn’t even ruling out putting Anthony Joshua against Kubrat Pulev without a crowd. One reason is the fact Joshua will need to defend his WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight titles and keep active, but another will be pressure to raise money.
But there are plenty who rely on crowds, even if they are only a couple of hundred, to stage shows across the country every weekend.
“If we can’t stage shows even in venues like York Hall before the end of the year, then smaller promoters will disappear from the sport,” said one concerned smallhall promoter. “It will be a financial disaster for us.”
Boxing will fight more than most sports to survive, but it will be a tough scrap.