Good Exposure For British Boxing In 2011?

In these shores and others I think this has been a very successful year in terms of getting the names out there and advertising boxing, from the bad with Haye to the good with... Um, well the results went against us quite a lot of the way this year, but in terms of getting boxing back into the public eye how successful do you think it has been?

We lost umpteen fights abroad.

Not a great one as there's questions being asked how much our guys like to travel.

True but I meant more in getting boxing more back into a mainstream sport and capturing headlines again.

Haye vs Harrison couldn't have been worse for getting the uk public into the sport.

Khan doesn't shut his mouth.

Hatton was doing coke for most of the year.

Froch's mum barely knows who he's fighting

And the rest the sporting public have barely heard of.

Happy.

I think Khan and Froch being on regular Sky Sports its been a positive move, however Haye robbed us again. I've felt for a while that if he's gone into a fight at 90% he should give back 10% of revenue earned through PPV. I could go on about that.

I think terrestrial TV needs to pick up boxing again, whether that just be late night (11pm+) highlights of the amateur division or even a fortnightly TV program almost like Ringside, to talk about boxing - it could be called Boxing 606 and replace something at say 10pm on BBC2 on a Sunday. I'd watch that!

David Haye is pretty well known due to his shameless PR campaigns - from Jonathan Ross to Gameshows, but still Froch isn't, and Khan is but for all the wrong reasons. Its not his ability people know, its his mouth.

whilst in an ideal world boxing would be on terrestrial TV think it would be dangerous to suggest the sport is dying because of this, look at football, which in the live form of the game is massively under represented on terrestrial yet goes from absolute strength to strength, likewise in recent years cricket is virtually never shown on terrestrial beyond an hour highlight show on 5 and the international game plays to packed houses over here.

For me the governing bodies and confusion around the belts hurts the sport far greater than the TV sitution ever could.

The masses have no way of getting to see boxing though. You can pop on down to your local pub to watch the game at 12pm on a saturday afternoon or sunday afternoon, or your local stadium and get tickets to watch it live, yet one of our boxers is fighting away from home, and unless you have a Sky sports subscription you're unlikely to know about it - and its not social! I remember my dad having his mates round for the Tyson/Bruno fight when I was a kid, and them all getting bladdered waiting for it to start - theres none of that now. I call my best friend and ask if he wants to watch boxing with me he's either all "Can't mate, watching UFC 48503867386" or "who's that?"

I just wish there were more ways of getting Boxing to the masses - if the only way currently is that abomination Tyson Fury on Channel 5, then god help us.