Is Heavyweight boxing a dying art?

Since the early days the Heavyweight division in boxing has always been the blue riband event, like the mens 100 metres in athletics, it is the one everyone wanted to see, the biggest men battling it out, the likes of Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali the list goes on and on.

In recent years, the prestige of being the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, seems to have faded, is this due to fight fans preferring the smaller faster weights or the decline of boxing skills at the Heavyweight weight division as this article looks at what has happened.

Probably, Heavyweight boxing  hit it’s pinnacle in the 1970’s, when you had fighting at that time, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Earnie Shavers, Ken Norton, Jimmy Ellis and at the end of the decade, Larry Holmes, all top class fighters who could of easily reigned in other decades, in the 80’s, you had Larry Holmes for the first half of the decade dominating, then Michael Spinks and a certain Mike Tyson coming on the scene, who just knocked people out for fun, their was excitement and fans could not wait to watch his next fight.

In the 90’s, you had fighters of the calibre of Tyson, Riddick Bowe, Michael Moorer, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, again top class fighters that fans loved to watch, the Bowe v Holyfield fights alone were exceptional.  Then came the 2000’s and the Klitschko’s dominance, and even though they are highly skilled you cannot say their fights are/were exciting and bringing the fans in.

For the last 10 plus years, the Ukrainians have dominated at the weight, and indeed most of the top contenders are Eastern European, some of them are technically good boxers, but very safe fighters, plus their contenders who have gained world title shots, such as Kevin Johnson, Tony Thompson and Shannon Briggs etc, are simply not good enough to fight for world titles, no disrespect to them, but they are not.  This trend plus the emergence of top fighters at lower weights such as De La Hoya, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Cotto, Margarito and Whittaker etc, have no doubt moved the attention away from the Heavyweight division.

Is there hope on the horizon for  the biggest men on the boxing planet? Yes in my opinion there is, our very own Anthony Joshua, is a throw back to the Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe’s of his time, he comes into the ring and just wants to hurt people, he has charisma which is seriously lacking in others and just looks like a top class athlete plus a Heavyweight boxer, you also have Deontay Wilder from America, again looks the part, likes to run his mouth off in press conferences, but so far has backed it up, and is the WBC champion, if these two can carry on knocking people over, then maybe others will raise their game and fight fans could return in their droves to watch the big boys in action, let’s hope so.