Network Television Cannot Save Boxing

Last month, NBC made a very minor ripple in the sporting universe with the announcement that it was bringing the fights back to network television with a series called Premier Boxing Champions (PBC). The ripple was so small that even some fight fans didn't feel it.

Then, earlier this week, the network announced that the fights would be called by Marv Albert. There is no more apt voice for the supposed return of boxing to whatever's left of America's collective cultural consciousness than a 73-year-old Jewish man who still wears a toupee. Sugar Ray Leonard will provide the commentary.

PBC shares its acronym with a degenerative liver condition. Its full name sounds like one you'd give to a shell corporation, or a line of ugly t-shirts. It could be boxing's salvation, a return to the prime-time network glory of the 1950s—but more likely, it's yet another sad symptom of the sport's slow, undignified and apparently irreversible decline.

The fights are brought to you by Al Haymon, a management type who has advised Floyd Mayweather amongst others; he was unavailable to talk for this story. There's something inherently suspicious about boxing promoters who don't like talking about the very thing they're promoting. It's like a car salesman who just hands you a brochure and walks away. But considering the vague nature of his project, it's no wonder Haymon wants to let his press releases do the talking. The venture seems to be at once a product of boxing's most natural commercial impulses and eerily disconnected from the sport's existing infrastructure.

When I asked whether the PBC was, like its name implied, some sort of actual tournament, a spokesman said, well, not exactly. It's just a series of fights. Nor is the outfit affiliated with any of boxing's numerous title-granting organizations, which means that, for example, the upcoming bout between Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson will have no bearing on Garcia's WBC and WBA belts or on Peterson's IBF belt. Or, as the nameless spokesman so nobly put it:

"The PBC eschews using titles, belts or any other duplicative categories. It is boxing at its finest, fighter to fighter, athlete to athlete with the pride of victory the only title one needs."

It's worth noting here that the spokesman alternated between referring to the new venture as "PBC" and "The PBC," so perhaps he was as confused as me. Still, the core idea is all well and good. The point of fighting is, well, fighting. There's something downright utopian about the notion of removing boxing from all the silly trappings of the sports media industrial complex. A simple sport deserves simple, elegant treatment. Two guys in a ring, beating the crap out of each other, "athlete to athlete"—that's what made boxing America's favorite sport in the first half of the twentieth century, and if we're to buy what (the) PBC is selling, that's what will make us fall in love with it again.

Or not. Because as corrupt and duplicative as boxing's alphabet soup belt-granting organizations are, they also provide meaning and heighten stakes. Muhammad Ali wasn't the champion of the world simply because he beat Sonny Liston, he was the champion of the world because he beat the champion. There is something to be said for winning a championship—both professional wrestling and (belatedly) college football get this—even if in boxing it's more "there can only be four" than "there can only be one."

Without built-in stakes, one wonders what the audience will be for these fights, and how the PBC and NBC will go about scrounging up enough viewers to make an actual dent on ratings-obsessed network television. (There will also be PBC fights on NBC Sports and SpikeTV). Unquestionably, there's a segment of fight fans who will be genuinely excited to see Garcia-Peterson, or Keith Thurman and Robert Guerrero, or Adrien Broner and John Molina. I know I am. These are relatively big names in the world of boxing, but not exactly well-known otherwise.

NBC may be banking on the PBC drawing in casual fans and channel surfers, but given that casual boxing fans are about as commonplace in 2015 America as phone booths, a related question seems more appropriate: will those aforementioned passionate fight junkies be enough to make the whole thing worth NBC's while?

One answer—and this brings us back to the most ambitious thing about the PBC, which is its anachronistic means of delivery—is that even an audience of hardcore fans doesn't have to be enough, at least not yet. For decades, fight observers have bemoaned the dominance of pay-per-view and subscription cable channels like HBO and Showtime. If people can't afford to watch boxing's best stars, the logic goes, how will the sport grow? Well, now the masses will be able to afford to watch boxing, and with the PBC on NBC, they will get to know some of its biggest stars.

The PBC spokesman said broadcasts would make heavy use of biographical sketches, much like NBC has done with the Olympics. Viewers at home will learn to hate Adrien Broner as fight fans do, and see the madness that is Danny Garcia's trainer dad Angel up close. Then they'll be invested; then they'll be hooked, the same way they were hooked on speed skater Anton Apolo Ohno.

Then again, to get hooked, TV watchers will have to tune in in the first place. We're six decades removed from Friday night fights on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, and three decades beyond the last time Marv Albert called boxing on NBC. Boxing was always run by criminals—even back in its heyday. But at least back then, the fighters were popular, and fans had the good sense to look the other way. Nowadays most conversations about boxing sound more like preemptive autopsies.

The truth is that boxing isn't dying any time soon; the irreversible and undignified decline is a mirage. Boxing may not hold the cultural significance it once did, but it still has enough fans to sustain the enterprise and make a few fighters and promoters very rich in the process. This gets overlooked because so many fight fans in America are people of color (boxing has been airing on over-the-air Univision and Telemundo pretty quietly for years, so it's not like NBC is breaking new ground here), and because so many writers insist on declaring the sport dead all the time.

The PBC isn't going to fix corruption in boxing, it isn't going to change the nature of the sport by ignoring all its infrastructure and pretending to be above the fray of petty things like title bouts. Nor is it proffering anything new. Americans have seen boxing. They've seen Ali and Frazier, Hearns and Hagler, Pacquiao and Marquez. They are distinctly aware of what boxing entails. Slapping a toupee on it and putting it back on network television isn't going to change anything.