Nations where boxing is a top 3 sport

I don't think there's any current nation where boxing is THE biggest sport, but where some places around the globe where it's top 3?

Boxing is number 2 in Mexico behind football.

It's number 2 in Puerto Rico, behind only baseball.

I think it's 2 or 3 in Argentina, behind football and perhaps tennis.

England? I'm guessing it's at least top 5 in England, behind football/rugby/cricket? I dunno, an English poster chime in

Boxing has always been valued in Eastern European nations like Germany and Russia.

Where else?

 

Cuba

 

Good one. I'd imagine it's number 2 behind baseball.

 

I'd say it might vie for top 3 in Argentina along with Rugby Union. Argentina have a strong side and have reached a couple of World Cup semi finals. I don't know for sure but I would guess rugby is more of a bourgeois sport over there, where as boxing would likely be the working man's sport (outside of football of course).

 

Panama maybe? Isn't their national stadium named after Duran?

 

I think baseball is king in Panama. Maybe even football second. Not sure on either.

Duran is without question their greatest athlete though.

 

Oh yeah no question.

I had a feeling baseball would be top, football definitely growing there as they qualified for the World Cup in 2018. Outside of that I cant think of many sports (apart from boxing) where there is a significant Panamanian presence, but I may be missing something.

 

I looked it up. Yeah, it's confirmed that baseball is their national sport.

I would just surmise that football is two, because they honestly don't crank out class boxers like they used to.

60s-80s they produced a shitload of class fighters.

You don't see Duran's, Laguna's, and Pedroza's anymore. I dunno what happened.

 

Boxing is massive here and I have to admit has grown substantially since the 90's. It's mainly Matchroom/Eddie Hearn casuals though, who have zero knowledge of boxing pre-Joshua. It's still viewership though and I guess you have to start somewhere. I would say though the majority of these fans are spillover football fans with no desire to delve into the sport's history. If you count them I think it is a top 5 sport in the UK. Football by a distance, then rugby and cricket make up the rest of the top 3 I'd say.

 

Yeah that's true and it's why I was doubting myself on Panama. They produced some fine fighters and one guy who was at a level only a handful of fighters ever manage to reach, but there is a significant drop off.

 

I think boxing, when you look past individual leagues, is still a top 5 sport in the U.S.

Behind football (our version), basketball, baseball, and MMA. Ehhh, probably auto racing is still ahead, but I think that's dying in the U.S.

Hockey seems dead in the U.S. The average American could pick out a boxing star before they could pick out a hockey star.

 

I think boxing surely must have been a top 3 sport in the US until the 50's or when basketball started to truly take off?

 

I can't believe it didn't even cross my mind as I play it every week myself and am obsessed, but padel probably beats out both rugby AND boxing into the Argentine top 3 by a significant margin. When you take into account it is the 2nd biggest sport in Spain behind football and the WPT is utterly dominated almost 50/50 between players from Spain and Argentina then you have to conclude it has at the very least a similar level of fandom over there.

 

Nah, basketball didn't take off in the U.S. until the late 80s, honestly. It was a sport in huge trouble before Magic, Bird, and Jordan came around.

I think in the 50s and 60s boxing was 2nd behind baseball. Or no worse than third.

By the 70s, the NFL became the biggest entity in America sports, and that never changed.

 

That's actually mad to me it took that long for basketball to blossom. I knew it was a slow burner but not that slow! It just seems like such an American sporting staple.

 

The league was close financial ruin at one point. Magic, Bird, Jordan, and David Stern taking over as commissioner in the mid 80s are the four reasons it didn't go under. Stern, though he was a horribly corrupt and evil guy, really globalized the sport.

 

Yeah that's mad to think about. I've always said it but basketball is by far imo the most exportable US sport. It's huge in mainland Europe and I know a ton of guys here in London who follow it like crazy. 98% of any basketball knowledge I have comes from them. Nuts to think the whole thing came so close to going under.

 

I don't like the product anymore, and I'm not alone, but it is what it is. European squads actually play the sport in a more appealing fashion nowadays.

Defense is absolutely gone in the NBA.

 

I'm not sure where boxing ranks in the UK, but Slice is probably right that it is a top 3 contender. Big fights and fighters are mainstream news here, while participation at grass -roots level is very high.

Football is no.1 by miles then it's take your pick really.

Not sure I agree with slice that boxing is bigger here than in the 90s, though. Boxing was huge here in the 90s - probably the second biggest sport at the time of Bruno/Benn/Watson/Eubanks/Naz. All five were legitimate crossover stars and big fights were both front page news and unmissible viewing The Big Fight Live was a mainstay of primetime Saturday night ITV viewing before the rise of pay-tv and the biggest fights attracted huge numbers - over ten million watched some of those fighters.

MTF

 

Good to see that boxing is thriving in the UK.

I don't think it's as healthy in the U.S., but I also don't think it's dead. It's always gonna be used as an avenue for urban American kids, especially ones that are too small for the NFL/NBA (which is 98% of them). So I think the U.S. will always produce boxing talent.

Talent isn't in the issue. Promoting that talent on accessible platforms is the issue.

 

I'm not seeing Cricket as a big sport in the UK, at least not with people my age. When I was growing up, most of my dad's mates were football fans first and foremost, then they liked Darts, Snooker and Boxing. I find more people my age prefer UFC to boxing tbh.

 

Cricket in the UK sounds on a similar trajectory to baseball in the U.S. - both losing appeal in younger generation.

Difference being, for many decades baseball was THE dominant sport in the U.S.

I dunno if cricket was ever bigger than football in the UK.

 

To be fair, you might be right, and I don't really have any metric to point to or anything, just that it generally "feels" bigger right now. Purely because it's getting exposure by the TV companies that it didn't get in the 90s. That will inevitably mean more fans, casual or not. Yes, you had Hamed, Bruno, Eubank, Benn and Lewis etc who were big, but I remember boxing fans had to practically beg Sky to show DLH-Tito close to two weeks after it happened. Roy Jones fights were hidden away on a highlights package on the ITV2 graveyard slot. After Bruno-McCall was there another fight at Wembley Stadium for the rest of the 90s? I can't remember one. Nowadays it seems like there's a boxing match there every other week.

Growing up, it was just me and a couple of mates at school who could name other boxers outside of the aforementioned Hamed, Bruno, Lewis etc. Nowadays people seem to know more, at least that's the impression I get.

 

Cricket is a weird one because it has three different versions - the traditional test matches (the ones which go on for five days), and the newer one-day 50-over and Twenty20 versions. The traditional version definitely seems to be on the decline barring a few specific matches. The other versions are still popular due to the faster pace and because it is done in a few hours as opposed to a week. There are big South Asian and Caribbean populations in the UK too, where it has always been hugely popular (the former especially), so it will always have a good level of support.

I don't think cricket has ever been bigger than football in the UK, apart from maybe at some point in the 1800s when football was still in its embryonic stages.

 

It seems like it's pretty big in Japan. Probably behind soccer and baseball though. Lb4lb lives there IIRC so he probably could give an accurate answer.

It used to be pretty big in Quebec (it qualifies as you said nation not country ;) ) probably second only to hockey during the Hilton to Bute eras. But it crashed down hard in recent years and is pretty much irrelevant now. I remember arguing not long ago that building up ''frauds'' like Bute and selling them as next coming is not good for the long term health of the sport. Seems I was right unfortunately.

 

Holland has football at 1. by a mile. Then road cycling at 2. At 3. we have ice skating in all forms possible, I can’t even try to explain the weird obsession we have with ice skating. At 4 it is a tie between Darts and Kickboxing. In both sports we are extremely dominating. I would go as far as saying there has never been a country better or more successful then us when it comes to K1/Kickboxing. Especially at heavyweight, we (literally) been kicking everybody’s ass globally for decades now.

Boxing is (unfortunately) not even in the top 10. Because everybody in Holland who is remotely talented as a combatant, will choose kickboxing over boxing.

 

Japan has the richest boxing culture of any Asian nation, so yeah, I would think boxing would be somewhere in there top 5-10.

 

Yeah i know a lot of cubans, and its boxing and baseball. Weirdly enough they told me at every event and party, theres always a few boxing match

 

Problem with boxing us that every body knows the star, but nobody follows the sport

 

I was about to say the same thing. It was really a golden age for boxing with lucas, hilton, bute, dorin, lemieux, ouellet and especially stevenson and pascal. Now they try to sell chicks fights and azbekh guys who cant speak french amd barely know two english words