Question to USA fans on Wilder ......

[Boxer]

After reading Joshua's comments saying .........

"‘Wilder’s had 10 years as a pro and he hasn’t done what I’ve done. People might say, “Then just get it done”
'He’s bigger here than he is over there, and that’s because of us. Wilder came to me after the Klitschko fight and said, “This is phenomenal — we need to be do doing more stuff like this in the States”.

My question is this .......... why isn't Deontay Wilder big or bigger in the US?

Why is it in your opinion outside of Vegas's money play, why don't American fighters sell out 80 - 90k seater stadiums? in the UK even mid tier fighters like Dillian Whyte can sell out a 20,000 O2 Arena.

I have to admit outside of the Superbowl moving into boxing American sports runners don't seem to appreciate the need for spectacle, why do you think the Romans invented the Coliseum?




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/bo...ing-coliseum-stadium-fight.html#ixzz5BY0uhBBp
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[Shoemaker]

Wilder didn't start boxing until his late teens iirc. Even with his bronze medal, he still had a lot of growing to do once he got to the pros. He was brought along really slowly but also promoted pretty heavily. I think this led to a situation where people disliked him immediately because he was a "can crusher" (IMO Canelo has suffered from a similar problem ever since HBO was promoting him pretty heavily all the way back when he was fighting the likes of Matthew Hatton at welterweight).

Why isn't he bigger now? No marquee name. Ortiz is his best win, and he just wasn't a well known fighter. Wilder hasn't fought someone who can draw and shine the light on Deontay. He also has an odd personality. He's not quite a heel, he's also not a nice guy, and he's not like DLH who could get 200k women who never watched boxing to buy a PPV. His best selling point is his punch. But until Ortiz he had never put it on someone who really mattered. Hopefully he'll gain a little more steam, and a fight/win with Joshua should do quite a bit for his popularity stateside (if only because American's love being the best at something, especially when they don't have to do the leg work individually).

 

[JayE]

With regards to the article, selling out stadiums is great, but the actual gate numbers aren't that big relative to the numbers put up in big fights in the US. You mention that Mayweather/Pacquiao brought in a comparable amount of people to a Reading home game, but it generated almost 10x the amount of Joshua/Klitschko in gate revenue. Hearn doesn't give a shit about the atmosphere of stadium fights. If he could generate anywhere close to what Mayweather was able to in gate numbers stateside, Joshua would be fighting there.

 

[HardasNAILZ]

He’s an ugly cunt who talks like a retarded child. That’s why he’s worth fuck all in America.

End of Fred.

 

[Seano]

After reading Joshua's comments saying .........

"‘Wilder’s had 10 years as a pro and he hasn’t done what I’ve done. People might say, “Then just get it done”
'He’s bigger here than he is over there, and that’s because of us. Wilder came to me after the Klitschko fight and said, “This is phenomenal — we need to be do doing more stuff like this in the States”.

My question is this .......... why isn't Deontay Wilder big or bigger in the US?

Why is it in your opinion outside of Vegas's money play, why don't American fighters sell out 80 - 90k seater stadiums? in the UK even mid tier fighters like Dillian Whyte can sell out a 20,000 O2 Arena.

I have to admit outside of the Superbowl moving into boxing American sports runners don't seem to appreciate the need for spectacle, why do you think the Romans invented the Coliseum?




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/bo...ing-coliseum-stadium-fight.html#ixzz5BY0uhBBp
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The guy isn't really that charismatic and the press doesn't really cover boxing very much.

 

[The Can Opener]

He’s an ugly cunt who talks like a retarded child. That’s why he’s worth fuck all in America.

End of Fred.

Fighter bash much?

Wilder isn't super famous because heavyweight boxing had been dead for a long time, especially in the USA with Klit still dominating in awful fights overseas. No one here really cared about the division anymore and Klit couldn't even get TV fights here. HBO tried to bring it back and brought Klit to the US for a big fight and it was awful. He was warned over and over for his illegal fighting tactics and put on a shit 12 round decision with the only question being would he be disqualified or not. Fury beating him in the worst fight of the decade is what made boxing interesting again.

Wilder puts on exciting fights but with a couple injuries and his biggest fights all cancelled because his opponents are PED cheating fucks he just never had a chance to get serious momentum going. So him not being a huge star is partially his fault for starting his career so slow and getting hurt and partly his opponents fault for sucking down PEDs like they were candy.

His loudmouth superstar asshole persona isn't what makes him unpopular. That shit makes fighters famous in the USA.

 

[PUO3]

He’s an ugly cunt who talks like a retarded child. That’s why he’s worth fuck all in America.

End of Fred.

You are a shit poster.

 

[BluntTrauma21]

Consort long post incoming, just a warning. I can't help it, I'm a naturally loquacious [and ruggedly handsome] person so just skip if you don't want to read some serious knowledge dropping.

Spoiler

The boxing way of doing business doesn't try to sell out stadiums most of the time. As @JayE said it's the gate that matters. Floyd/Pac could've easily sold out a 100k capacity stadium but they preferred to make it more inclusive and instead they decided to fight at a 17k seat arena and jacked the ticket prices up to make up for the lack of capacity. 1,500 for the cheapest ticket all the way up to 7.5k, and on the secondary market the cheapest ones were going for like 4k/33k cheapest and most expensive, respectively.

https://www.si.com/boxing/2015/03/11/floyd-mayweather-manny-pacquiao-fight-ticket-price

Less ppl more money per ticket, it adds up. Plus, since there's less ppl who can attend in person, you can make the ones who can't afford or just didn't get a chance to buy a ticket b/c the venue already sold out to fork out 100 bucks to watch it at home or pay more for a closed circuit type viewing (I hear those are dope btw).

Boxing is it's own thing and ppv and expensive ticket prices are why they don't usually try to sell out stadiums for fights here in the States.

Now as for Wilder not being very big in the US is b/c we don't care about boxing like you guys do in the UK. For instance, how many mainstream sports to you Brits really follow? Obviously soccer, boxing seems like a mainstream sport as well. What else: rugby, cricket, darts? I honestly don't know other than soccer what the second/third biggest mainstream sports are over there and I'm actually curious as to what sports you guys like second to soccer.

My point is that you guys don't seem to have the diversity of sports that we do here in America, so a guy like AJ is gonna be huge b/c he's part of a country that follows boxing more like a mainstream sport than we do over here and boxing is one of a much smaller amount of mainstream sports you guys seem to be interested in, so he's even more famous b/c of that factor as well.

Here in the States, American football is huge, college stadiums are selling out 100k for big games, nfl stadiums are doing high 5 figures every week during nfl season, baseball has stadiums that fill around 50k for popular teams and/or big games, and they're playing 162 games a year to boot. Not to mention basketball both college and pro selling 20k to 30k stadiums. And Hockey, the Canadians run hockey but we have a ton of teams and hardcore fans here as well.

We can and have had sporting events that could easily match or surpass 80k attendance, but just not for boxing. The boxing business right or wrong, would rather sell out a smaller arena for bigger tickets prices as well as take advantage of the ppv system to make us shell out cash for a couple hrs of entertainment just like with mma. I wish we'd get away from it but it is what it is atm.

So Deontay isn't a big name b/c even tho he's an American Olympic medalist and current World HW Champ and should be respected and known as such, he just isn't. And that's b/c boxing just isn't a mainstream sport here, ppl are thinking about March Madness, the start of baseball season, hockey and nba playoffs, etc.

Most mainstream sports fans aren't thinking about Deontay, they're actually probably more worried about who their team's gonna take in the first rd of the nfl draft next month. It's unfortunate for Deontay and boxing fans in general, but that's the reason.

Sports fans have too much shit over here to pay attention to and Deontay is a guy who gets overlooked b/c of all the other stuff going on. But once he ko's AJ he'll get his due money and fame .

Hope that sheds some light.Sorry for the verbosity but I don't really cut this stuff down, it's just stream of consciousness and I won't edit until after I post b/c I'm a lazy asshole. /rant

 

[Boxer]

I know what people are saying about selling out stadiums vs Box office TV numbers / sales in comparison to Floyd Mayweather and there's no argument there ..........

But I am comparing Joshua vs Wilder not Joshua vs Mayweather.

It seems to me Wilder is neither selling massive numbers in pay per view or Arena capacity and for the life of me considering his entertaining fighting style i can't see why? if he was a UK fighter he'd be up there with Joshua.

All I would say regarding Mayweather is more about my comment on the American fighters / promoters attitude toward spectacle, Mayweather vs Paq could of sold out a stadium right? so why did they low ball for a 20k arena? the pay per view numbers are a separate issue that took care of itself, it doesn't explain why American promoters don't understand that "great" events need great venues.

UFC did it with GSP in Montreal.

 

[Blazeblack]

In my opinion there are several factors. The most obvious being that Wilder isn’t terribly charismatic. Other contributing factors are that-1. The heavyweight division has been ignored in the US for quite a while, largely due to the domince of the Klitschko brothers. 2. From the beginning of his career Wilder has been criticized for his his erratic style the boxing community. Not to mention the admittedly underwhelming level of opposition hes faced for a large part of his career. 3. He took his title from a title holder that wasn’t exactly selling out seats himself. Most casuals only know Stiverne as some guy Deontay ko’d a couple months ago. If he took that belt from Vitali we might not be having this conversation. 4. His race and the fact that he talks like an American black man (fucked up, but probably has something to do with it). 5. Boxing as a sport competes with a lot of more popular sports that are basically franchises with massive media deals. Most casual viewers don’t follow boxing they just watch major fights. I do think Deontay is picking up traction though, that Ortiz ko turned heads, the beef with AJ helps too. Let’s face it, we Americans love a good shitstorm.

 

[Hagler]

Does his coming from 'bama also affect his appeal ? Just wondering.

 

[JayE]

I know what people are saying about selling out stadiums vs Box office TV numbers / sales in comparison to Floyd Mayweather and there's no argument there ..........

But I am comparing Joshua vs Wilder not Joshua vs Mayweather.

It seems to me Wilder is neither selling massive numbers in pay per view or Arena capacity and for the life of me considering his entertaining fighting style i can't see why? if he was a UK fighter he'd be up there with Joshua.

All I would say regarding Mayweather is more about my comment on the American fighters / promoters attitude toward spectacle, Mayweather vs Paq could of sold out a stadium right? so why did they low ball for a 20k arena? the pay per view numbers are a separate issue that took care of itself, it doesn't explain why American promoters don't understand that "great" events need great venues.

UFC did it with GSP in Montreal.

It's more about Joshua being a perfect storm of circumstance than anything being odd about Wilder's popularity. Joshua won an Olympic gold medal in London in 2012 and has been perfectly groomed since to be a mega star. As a weekend-to-weekend sport, boxing is considerably stronger on a per capita basis in the UK than it is in the US, and that's only magnified in the HW division (another Brit remains the lineal HW champion of the world, probably the biggest fight of Wlad's reign in terms of exposure was against a Brit, etc.).

Despite his bronze medal after training for a very short time, Wilder was never close to being a phenom (if you can consider Joshua a phenom; I wouldn't necessarily say that he is, but it has certainly been believably presented to be the case to the British public for the better part of the last decade) and he's had an extremely slow build up with his career. You can argue whether that was a good or a bad thing (Wilder obviously needed ample time to develop in the pros, but it was perhaps excessively slow), but he only just had his first fight against a genuinely elite HW. A black HW from Alabama who is clearly flawed and is only just stepping up the world level in his 30s isn't someone anyone should expect to be a star given the current climate of HW boxing in the US, regardless his KO percentage (not suggesting that Wilder's KO% is misleading as he obviously can bomb).

As for American promotion and the choice not to sell out stadiums, if they could make more money selling out Cowboys' Stadium, they'd do it (and they have done it). Canelo and Pacquiao have both done stadium fights and neither man had any trouble selling them out. In the end, what pays the most is what they'll do, and unless stadium owners/city or state financiers are willing to pay massive site fees like big Vegas casinos are, or outsell the gate in total money (again, ~20,000 people attending Mayweather/Pacquiao generated drastically more than the 80-90,000 who attended Joshua/Klitschko), then promoters won't have the biggest American fights in stadiums. Promoters aren't likely to give a shit about spectacles unless those spectacles are going to maximize their profits. Again, if Joshua could generate total revenue (that includes gate) stateside in Vegas like Mayweather and to a lesser extent Pacquiao and Canelo, he'd stop blathering on about the spectacle of 90,000 being the be all end all of promotion. Money tends to be the be all end all of promotion.

 

[ProBoxingInsidr]

 

[JayE]

Does his coming from 'bama also affect his appeal ? Just wondering.

One would assume it certainly doesn't help, but if Wilder were to KO Joshua and can continue to win via KO on the world level, he will become plenty popular. There really isn't a whole lot of reason for people to expect that Wilder should already be particularly popular.

 

[stuff jones]

The casuals who get excited just because a guy is a heavyweight and hits people hard have switched to MMA stateside. What's left are fans who appreciate boxing skills. Heavyweight fighters in general but especially this current crop led by Wilder lack boxing skills when compared to lighter weight classes.

 

[Boxer]

It's more about Joshua being a perfect storm of circumstance than anything being odd about Wilder's popularity. Joshua won an Olympic gold medal in London in 2012 and has been perfectly groomed since to be a mega star. As a weekend-to-weekend sport, boxing is considerably stronger on a per capita basis in the UK than it is in the US, and that's only magnified in the HW division (another Brit remains the lineal HW champion of the world, probably the biggest fight of Wlad's reign in terms of exposure was against a Brit, etc.).

Despite his bronze medal after training for a very short time, Wilder was never close to being a phenom (if you can consider Joshua a phenom; I wouldn't necessarily say that he is, but it has certainly been believably presented to be the case to the British public for the better part of the last decade) and he's had an extremely slow build up with his career. You can argue whether that was a good or a bad thing (Wilder obviously needed ample time to develop in the pros, but it was perhaps excessively slow), but he only just had his first fight against a genuinely elite HW. A black HW from Alabama who is clearly flawed and is only just stepping up the world level in his 30s isn't someone anyone should expect to be a star given the current climate of HW boxing in the US, regardless his KO percentage (not suggesting that Wilder's KO% is misleading as he obviously can bomb).

As for American promotion and the choice not to sell out stadiums, if they could make more money selling out Cowboys' Stadium, they'd do it (and they have done it). Canelo and Pacquiao have both done stadium fights and neither man had any trouble selling them out. In the end, what pays the most is what they'll do, and unless stadium owners/city or state financiers are willing to pay massive site fees like big Vegas casinos are, or outsell the gate in total money (again, ~20,000 people attending Mayweather/Pacquiao generated drastically more than the 80-90,000 who attended Joshua/Klitschko), then promoters won't have the biggest American fights in stadiums. Promoters aren't likely to give a shit about spectacles unless those spectacles are going to maximize their profits. Again, if Joshua could generate total revenue (that includes gate) stateside in Vegas like Mayweather and to a lesser extent Pacquiao and Canelo, he'd stop blathering on about the spectacle of 90,000 being the be all end all of promotion. Money tends to be the be all end all of promotion.

Two things ...........

One, why does it matter that he's "a black HW from Alabama"? anymore than Joshua is a guy from Watford?
If Wilder was a Brit he'd be as big as Joshua because he delivers.
Dillian Whyte wasn't perfectly groomed and has a checkered history, been shot and all sorts, been beat by Joshua and he still sells out 20k seater arena's.
Fact of the matter is for some reason unknown, Americans just don't seem to back Wilder on mass and I cannot figure out why? the reasons you gave are not relevant in the UK.
If a HW is champ, doing well, delivering, we will back him.
He's our champion after all.

Two, again this Mayweather vs Paq made more money because of pay per views than Joshua, that is completely irrelevant yet again.
Its not Tickets sold vs PPV buys, its if you can sell out an Arena why wouldn't you do it?
The PPV's take care of themselves, that is not the subject.
The subject is Floyd vs Paq could of made even more money with Stadium tickets sold on top of the PPV and it would of had a crowd befitting the magnitude of the event.

Great events should be held in great stadiums with a crowd to boot.
Again even from the "total money" argument you would get more from a full stadium plus the PPV rather than less tickets sold and the PPV?

 

[PUO3]

Multiple factors: Lack of promotion, fighting style isnt appealing to some boxing purists (though I believe this view is quickly changing), and lack of opposition up until recently.

Pretty easy to see. Also pretty easy to see that his popularity is growing significantly the last 6 months or so.

He likely wont reach AJ’s level, but thats ok. AJ has a true marketing machine behind him.

 

[burningspear]

People bail on a charlatan and Deontay appeared to be just that. A ridiculous amount of pro fights before fighting someone wirh a pulse. So, the general perception was one of meh! Another bum of the month fight for Wilder.
Perception is difficult to change.

 

[Philtard]

Two things ...........

One, why does it matter that he's "a black HW from Alabama"? anymore than Joshua is a guy from Watford?
If Wilder was a Brit he'd be as big as Joshua because he delivers.
Dillian Whyte wasn't perfectly groomed and has a checkered history, been shot and all sorts, been beat by Joshua and he still sells out 20k seater arena's.
Fact of the matter is for some reason unknown, Americans just don't seem to back Wilder on mass and I cannot figure out why? the reasons you gave are not relevant in the UK.
If a HW is champ, doing well, delivering, we will back him.
He's our champion after all.

Two, again this Mayweather vs Paq made more money because of pay per views than Joshua, that is completely irrelevant yet again.
Its not Tickets sold vs PPV buys, its if you can sell out an Arena why wouldn't you do it?
The PPV's take care of themselves, that is not the subject.
The subject is Floyd vs Paq could of made even more money with Stadium tickets sold on top of the PPV and it would of had a crowd befitting the magnitude of the event.

Great events should be held in great stadiums with a crowd to boot.
Again even from the "total money" argument you would get more from a full stadium plus the PPV rather than less tickets sold and the PPV?

I think there is a little bit of the old racial tensions and demographics thrown in there. I'm not saying exclusively that's the reason for his lack of following. But I think it 0lays a little part.

I think in a little part a guy like mike Tyson played into the savage animal African American thought and is why he was so popular. Just a smidge. A lot of it I also think is that deontays promotion team has failed him. He seems like a hustled himself and is always on shows and stuff himself. He just seems to be doing it by himself.

 

[TinkerMan]

I don't get it either look at his record, 40-0 with 39 knockouts (I think) he should be a huge marketable star