Why does light heavy weight and cruiser weight get no love?

[Brampton_Boy]

When we think of the sports starts, there are a hand full at heavyweight (Jushua, Wilder, Miller), tons at light weight through middle weight, but almost nobody comes to mind when I think of LHW and CW. I actually had to google who the CW champion was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_boxing_rankings#Cruiserweight

I have literally heard of two of the top 10.

Why is that? Even when we think of the best fighters in history, LHW and CW never really attracted the attention that other weight divisions did.

Heck, Adonis Stevenson is/was a champ for the better part of a decade, and I would have to stay up to 1am to watch his fight replays on TSN.

Lack of talent? Lack of promotion? Other?

 

[mozfonky]

historically, it's been said it's because the heavyweights get all the attention and I guess with them being so close, its too easy for people to think,"the heavyweight champ would kill him" and it was almost always true up until weights and roids came into the picture.

 

[Minowafanatic]

When was the last time an American fought for a world cruiserweight title? I guess it was BJ Flores a couple years back which says a lot. There's no US or British talent at that weight so it's not going to get much attention from English-speaking media. Similarly, light heavyweight got plenty of attention when Andre Ward was there.

 

[The Moloko man]

If you actually pay attention to boxing, Light heavy got a lot of press when pavlik/dawson/tarver/hopkins were hot....but it swung to the canadians/foreigner and fell off the big US marketing machine with pascal/adamek/chilemba
/adonis

....But then the Brits were hot behind the division when cleverly and tony made a run at it....the same for cruiser when haye was champ

Interest was only renewed in the us because of ward being an undefeated ring genius who is also American and kovalev being painted as a sadistic unstoppable russkie....but now that ward is retired and the aura of kov is gone somewhat, it seems like the division gets no attention

Of course imo the big reason is the lack American or British contenders/champs....the brits are crazy about boxing and the US will market the help out of a particular fight or fighter if a charismatic or polarizing American is involved regardless of the sport being relegated to niche status stateside....but when there's no American or British champs it's a media blackout

So with being said it's easy to see why you don't see or hear peep of the divisons when the lhw champs/contenders are named bivol, kovalev, beterbiev, gvozdyk, murat, Barrera, alvarez
And the cruiser champs/contender are named gassiev, uysk, breidis, vlasov, lebedev, glowacki, shumenov, Lorena, dorticos

Both division are nearly all Cuban and east euro's


The pattern is visibily traceable, as seen by the current heavyweight top 10 landscape being in tatters yet experiencing a huge popularity boon in great Britain and a resourcing interest in the state's on the back of wilder

Yet here is the top 10 currently

1.Anthony Joshua
2.deontay wilder
3.Alexander povetkin
4.Joseph parker
5.kubrat pulev
6.luis Ortiz
7.dillian whyte
8.dominic breazale
9.jarrell miller
10.Adam konwacki

*******************************
1.world champ
2.world champ
3. World champ but old now
4.David tua 2.0
5.old
6.really old
7.domestic level chisora knockoff
8.young and green
9.young and green
10.young and green


Now here's the top ten from near a decade prior when the excuse for lack of interest and marketability was because of quality of talent

1. 
   
   • 1.Wladimir Klitschko
   • 2.Vitali Klitschko
   • 3.Ruslan Chagaev
   • 4.Alexander Povetkin
   • 5.Nikolay Valuev
   • 6.Sultan Ibragimov
   • 7.Samuel Peter
   • 8.Oleg Maskaev
   • 9.Juan Carlos Gomez
   • 10Alexander Dimitrenko
   **************************

1.world champ
2.world champ
3. world champ
4.world champ
5.world champ
6.world champ
7world champ
8.world champ
9.world champ(at cruiser)
10.good contender who is still beating the up and comers (like granat) to this day

But the problem being they were all foreign east euros and cubans

Btw im not trying to make this a racial/ethnic thing....if povetkin had been raised in Brighton beach or Gomez in Miami then they would probably be sports media darlings
...similar to pavlik(son of Slavic immigrants) was with his "descendant of east europe immigrants but born and raised in Youngstown Midwestern boy done right" story