This is the second of a two-part article series. Part 1 explores the impact of BoxRec on writers and matchmakers. here.
At first glance, this is a difficult question to answer: Which is the more important tool for a 21st century boxing writer: BoxRec or YouTube?
So, a simple question: which is the more important tool for boxing in the 21st century? fanBoxRec or YouTube?
Access to records is great, but there's no question which Internet innovation has had a bigger impact on improving the fan experience: the ability to watch nearly every bout in boxing's rich history at any time (provided there are cameras available).
I can watch Corrales vs. Castillo while sitting in my car (not that I'm driving, of course. Always protect yourself guys). I can watch Hagler vs. Hearns during my bathroom break. I can pry the eyes open of my most hated foe. A Clockwork OrangeChange up your style and force yourself to watch “Lewis v. Holyfield III” any day now.
It's hard for a website that lists match results to compete, even when we're talking millions of matches.
But for boxing writers, both sites are extremely useful.
Before YouTube, I couldn't write so many fight previews based on hardcore film analysis, and instead had to randomly write a few sentences about foreign fighters I'd never seen or boxers of the past. Of course, this was perfectly doable, but it required patience and sometimes the connections to get hold of VHS tapes.
When I first started working as editor at The Ring, I recall examples of fights that would be OK to cover now but would have been difficult in April 1998. Showtime aired Felix Trinidad vs. Mahenge Zulu in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, and also aired the co-sponsored Frankie Lyles vs. Andrei Shkarikov, but the rest of the undercard was nowhere to be seen in the U.S., including the fight when unknown Freddie Norwood beat Antonio Cermeno for the featherweight belt.
After hearing the results (which, if I remember correctly, was a week or two after the office's Boxing News arrived), we decided Norwood was worthy of a feature story, provided Don King Productions would provide us with the international broadcast tapes.
We called, they FedExed it, I watched the fight, and was able to see that Norwood won cleanly and looked good in the fight, and soon I was interviewing “Little Hagler” and writing a feature about him.
In the modern world of boxing writing, this all happens much faster thanks to YouTube. Before YouTube, Norwood couldn't write a feature for “The Ring” if DKP couldn't fulfill his VHS request.
Before YouTube, there were very few features on Asian fighters who didn't travel to the U.S. to fight. If Naoya Inoue had come on the scene 25 years earlier, “The Ring” wouldn't have ignored him, but the reality is that most of his fights would have been relegated to 400-word “ringside reports” (though I think this is an example of streaming services having as much influence as YouTube).
As an example of something I wrote during my YouTube days, 10 years ago, Grantland.com commissioned me to write the following piece as a follow-up to their mini-documentary on Muhammad Ali vs. Ken Norton III at Yankee Stadium: article Explore the enduring problem of controversial decisions in boxing.
I never watched Ali-Norton III in its entirety. Without YouTube, I would have had to rely on contemporary records for the call and, unable to see it with my own eyes, would have had to carefully avoid viewing it as the worst fight of all time. Thanks to YouTube, I was able to carefully score the fight and see how badly Norton suffered (I predicted 5 rounds out of 10 for the challenger), and confidently categorize and contextualize the call as an example of the judges dereliction of duty.
Similar to the arrival of BoxRec, longtime matchmaker Eric Bottcher has seen the way he does his job change dramatically since the advent of YouTube — mostly for the better, but the ability for anyone to watch any match at any time has also made his job more difficult.
“YouTube has made it harder to schedule fights for two reasons,” Bottcher said. “One is that the commission now looks at a fighter with, say, a 1-1 record and if they feel that the fighter is embarrassing, they're not going to approve the fight. Before, they just looked at a 1-1 record and said, 'Yeah, he's OK.'”
“And secondly, if the guy who's 1-1 is really strong, my opponent might see him on YouTube and think, 'Yeah, I'm not gonna fight that guy. That guy's really strong.'
“So it makes my job harder, but it's OK because it saves the promoter, myself and the committee the embarrassment of potentially having a mismatch.”
Ultimately, thanks to YouTube, “there's no longer an excuse for someone like me to be a terrible pageant host,” Bottger said.
If Bojer misses something, someone else might catch it, thanks to YouTube: He points to Matthew Dell'Ario, executive director of the New York State Athletic Commission, who pays close attention and watches the latest bout or two of any boxer Bojer suggests pairing.
“The show has saved my life a few times. I'd pitch a guy who was 2-0, and Matt would call me and say, 'Hey, have you seen this guy yet?' And I'd say, 'I've got to be honest with you, I haven't.' So I'd watch this guy on YouTube, call him back and say, 'Wow, thanks for bringing that up. There's no way I'm using that guy.'”
Bosger once had a huge collection of games on VHS tapes that he loaned to his neighbor, Shannon Briggs, decades ago and is still waiting to get back. In those days, Bosger often selected players without seeing them in action and had to rely on word of mouth.
Kellyanne Conway may have introduced the term “alternative facts” to the world, but she didn't invent the concept.
“What I would do is make calls,” Bottcher recalled. “If I had a player from Colorado, and he was playing six games in Colorado, and it was all a club show, and there was no video, I'd have to make calls to people. And of course, the people who have an incentive to get that player in the game are going to say what they want to hear rather than the truth. And we've all been there. We've all, quite frankly, set up some games that shouldn't have been played because of that.”
But the distortion of reality in boxing before the introduction of the YouTube lie detector went beyond verbal exaggeration of a boxer's abilities.
Bottcher shared a story about heavyweight boxer Peter McNeely, who famously served as Mike Tyson's first post-prison opponent in a bout that garnered more than 1.5 million pay-per-view sales and lasted just 89 seconds. McNeely's manager, Vinnie Vecchione, had tried to turn a mediocre fight in Medfield in 1995 into a big money fighter. On April 22nd of that year, in McNeely's final fight before securing a contract with Tyson, he brought the 35-1 McNeely to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to face mega-trial horse Frankie Hines, who had a record of 14 wins, 70 losses, and 2 draws.
McNealy scored quickly. Reportedly He knocked out Hines with a left hook in just six seconds in the fastest knockout in boxing history, boosting his confidence heading into the Tyson bout.
“I was pretty big into matchmaking at the time,” Bottcher recalled, “and this bothered me because Frankie Hines was a fighter who could take a punch and Peter McNeely wasn’t a fighter who could take a punch, so it was puzzling to me how this could happen.
“Then I saw Frankie Hines on the show, and he was from North Carolina, and I was living in Virginia at the time, and I was like, ‘How could I beat that guy in six seconds?’ And he smiled at me and he said, ‘I’ve never been to Arkansas.’ And I immediately realized what had happened.”
Just to be clear, Frankie Hines told Bottcher that the guy McNeely knocked out in six seconds wasn't Frankie Hines, but someone else who probably knew he only lasted six seconds.
“You could get away with that back then,” Bottcher continued, “there was no YouTube, no one recorded fights on their phones, no federal ID cards. Look, I heard Rocky Marciano fought his brother at least once, and Peter McNeely fought his trainer once. That sort of thing happened.”
“But it's a lot harder to do now. It's not a strategy anymore. Back then, you could cut corners, but it was a whole different world. YouTube and BoxRec have changed that, and you can't do that anymore, at least as a habit.”
When I interviewed Bottcher for this article, he initially got the story wrong. As I recall from a story 29 years ago, he correctly mixed up the name of his opponent and the soft-commission southern state that hosted the bout. And had I not been able to easily look up McNeely's detailed record on BoxRec, I might not have realized that and published this article with McNeely dominating the fake Danny Wofford in Louisiana.
For me as a writer, BoxRec is needYouTube is more wantSo, going back to the question at the beginning of this article – which websites can you live without – I think I’ve found the answer.
But certainly, they both make my job immeasurably easier and my articles more accurate and detailed.
I am honored that you took the time to read this when you could have just watched Foreman Lyle on your phone.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with over 25 years of experience covering boxing for outlets including Boxing Scene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat and The Ring (where he served as editor in chief for seven years). He is also the co-host of the HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney and Ring Theory. Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Ruskin and MulvaneyHe has received three Best Writing Awards from the BWAA for his writing for The Ring, Grantland and HBO. Outside of boxing, Casino Report 2014 Money maker effectContact details: X or LinkedInor email us at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
