How would you make a sport more interesting?

Boxing

  • Get rid of the judges, or increase the number of judges to 5 or more, with fans getting a vote for fights with a large enough audience. People could vote online, and the average fan score can be treated as one judge. Fans get pissed off when there is a robbery. Now they can be heard.

The reason for having more judges is that it makes it more difficult to corrupt the sport if there are more eyes that affect the outcome.

  • Give more credit for being the aggressor, like they used to. The Mayweather era changed the paradigm, but almost nobody is as good as Mayweather, so judging has become extremely subjective. Standardize the framework, and encourage fighters to be more aggressive by rewarding more points for aggression.

  • Create a National Boxing Commission that regulates match ups and forces belt holder to face their mandatory opponents, or surrender the belts. It's too politicized right now. The regulatory bodies are puppets of the promoters, so it's too easy for fighters to avoid opponents they don't want to fight.

  • Penalize fighters for bad performances beyond simply taking a loss.

Many fighters nowadays will just give up in certain situations, and the winners end up getting penalized for it because promoters and fans will call them boring. Pacquiao fans blamed Mayweather for "running" too much. It's not the winner's job to make the fight. It's the responsibility of the guy LOSING to make it a better fight. The problem here is, casual fans don't understand the sport well enough to figure this out for themselves, so the sport should enforce rules that penalize those that don't put in the proper effort. Rigo is another guy that gets penalized for being boring, even though he will win his fights 11 rounds to 1, or even 12 rounds to none. In this situation, the loser should be going crazy the last few rounds, to try to score a lucky knockout. If the winner is dominating a fight, there's no reason he should have to change.

If you lose big, you should lose more ground in the rankings.

  • Make smaller rings mandatory. Right now, boxers can negotiate the size of the ring. Bigger rings mean less face offs.

  • Decrease the number of weight classes. In today's game, you can avoid a tough opponent by adding just a few pounds. Decrease the number of weight classes. If you happen to be at the lower range of a weight class, tough. Adjust your style accordingly or try to move down.

Of course, none of this will happen, because boxing is being held hostage by the promoters, but to answer your question, these changes would make boxing much better.

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