There’s way too much product on pay-per-view. That’s something every boxing fan can agree on.
Just look at the calendar for the next three months. There’s Sebastian Fundora vs. Keith Thurman on Prime Video PPV on March 28, Deontay Wilder vs. Derek Chisora on DAZN PPV seven days later, Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez vs. David Benavidez on Prime Video PPV on May 2, Fabio Wardley vs. Daniel Dubois on DAZN PPV a week after that and Oleksandr Usyk vs. Rico Verhoeven in another DAZN PPV two weeks later, on May 23.
Five pay-per-views over the course of nine Saturdays is ridiculous, and it’s objectively bad for the health of the sport.
But what if we could turn it into something that’s also a little bit good?
Maybe not directly for the health of the sport (though there can be indirect positive consequences), but for something more important: the health of the fighters.
What if the excess of product on pay-per-view could be used to make ex-boxers’ lives better?
Lisa McClellan, the sister and longtime caretaker of former middleweight titlist Gerald McClellan, was on Andre Ward’s podcast, The Art of Ward, last week, reminding listeners about the Ring of Brotherhood Foundation, her charitable organization that helps ex-boxers who are paying the price that so many of them sadly do pay when their careers are over.
Her brother is perhaps the most high-profile example of recent decades, badly debilitated following his 1995 loss to Nigel Benn, but of course there are countless lesser known warriors who left a piece of themselves in the ring and now need assistance in one way or another.
The Ring of Brotherhood isn’t the only organization like this. In the UK, The Ringside Charitable Trust has a similar mission, looking out for ex-boxers with a specific plan to someday open a residential care facility for fighters in need.
Now, back to the “what if.” With a pay-per-view or two every month, typically priced between about $50-$75, some of them selling 50,000 units, some of them selling 500,000, what if one dollar from every purchase went directly to one of these charities to benefit former fighters?
You don’t need an advanced math degree to get a sense for the impact. If the boxing pay-per-view industry produces a total of 1.5 million buys in a calendar year (a conservative estimate that assumes no massive million-buy superfight, just a bunch of solid shows headlined by the likes of Gervonta “Tank” Davis or Benavidez or Ryan Garcia), well, $1.5 million completely shifts the paradigm.
That covers a lot of Lisa McClellans who no longer have to give up their livelihoods to provide full-time care themselves, and it covers a lot of ex-fighters who need to see a doctor but choose not to because the cost is prohibitive to them.
It seems like such a simple proposition, a classic “who says no?” The network and promoter charging $75 for the pay-per-view aren’t going to feel a pinch from only collecting $74. In fact, by advertising the fact that the PPV goes to support ex-boxers, they’ll probably sell a few extras to fans who were on the fence.
And they’ll generate additional positive publicity. The mainstream outlets that ignore boxing most of the time, run by editors who wouldn’t know Jack Johnson from Cherneka Johnson, might just have some interest in a story about the upcoming fight card where a dollar from every PPV purchase goes to Ring of Brotherhood.
The added exposure and goodwill could very well translate to more money for the PPV carriers and the promoters, even after you subtract $1 from every buy.
Who says no?
So far, everyone (even if this exact idea hasn’t been pitched).
My BoxingScene colleague Matt Christie is a trustee of The Ringside Charitable Trust, recruited by the chairman and founder, Dave Harris, about a decade ago.
“In 2018, while I was still at Boxing News, and Boxing News at that point had a fairly big office in the center of London, I set up a meeting at the office,” Christie told me. “There were representatives from Matchroom, Queensbury and most of the other, smaller British promoters. And Dave made his speech and said, this is what’s needed, we all need to work together.
“And he was met with just incredible indifference. And it really, really surprised me at the time. But just about everyone, with maybe one or two exceptions, turned ‘round to him and said, ‘This will never work. This will just never work.’
“I genuinely thought that everyone in that room would be like, ‘yes, Dave Harris, we’re behind you,’ and he would get a standing ovation. And it wasn't that way at all.”
Lou DiBella has mostly exited the boxing business, but he’s worn two of the key hats for this conversation, as a network executive at HBO and a promoter. And none of the resistance Christie and Harris ran into surprises him.
“You can’t expect a lot of altruism coming out of the sport,” DiBella said. “There are some people and promoters in this business who will give to charity and do nice things, but they’re generally not organized about it, nor do I think it would work if you tried to organize it, because I don’t think anyone in boxing particularly gives a fuck about one another.
“I only know of a couple of promoters in the whole world making money right now, and most of the promoters that would have been more inclined to support something like this have been chased out of the industry.
“I've contributed to almost every GoFundMe or other fundraiser for a fighter over the last 25 years that’s been damaged or hurt in the ring -- and I’m not saying that because I’m looking for a pat on the back. I’m saying that more of an indictment of everyone else. The entire industry doesn't seem to feel any sense of obligation to one another.”
Christie shared with me a theory. He doesn’t think boxing promoters are necessarily opposed to giving to charity – pointing out as just one example that Frank Warren has been known to stage evenings of boxing where all the proceeds go to a good cause.
But he thinks they may be opposed to drawing attention to this type of charity.
“Their business is to promote boxing and make boxing look wonderful to the eyes of the public,” he said. “However, the moment they turn around and say, ‘We are now admitting that boxing can cause brain damage,’ they see that as a real bad look for their business. So I think that is the reason for it.”
It’s not just tricky to square from a promotional perspective. There’s also the fighters’ perspective.
During Ward’s podcast conversation with McClellan, they noted that Roy Jones Jnr, a friend of Gerald’s since their amateur days, sent money to support the fallen fighter, but chose not to visit him while Roy was an active boxer. In order to continue to step into the ring and take the risks he needed to take, Jones put up a wall separating him from the realities of just how devastating the downsides could be. So he didn’t actually come see his friend in person until he, too, was finished fighting.
Then there’s this part of a fighter’s mentality: When they’re at their peak, most of them convince themselves that what happened to McClellan and so many others could never happen to them.
“You are trying to encourage active boxers to put something into essentially what is a pension fund, but they all think they’re invincible,” Christie observed. “They all think they won’t need it. And, frankly, 99 percent of boxers are not getting paid a great deal anyway. But even the ones who are, who could afford to contribute, most of them think, ‘What’s the point? I’ll be fine.’”
Of course, we know all too well that most of them are not fine. Boxing takes a toll -- whether subtle, severe or somewhere in between -- on nearly all of its participants.
And DiBella thinks the fact that there is so much damage and so much need ironically acts as one more reason for the boxing community to resist a cause like this.
“Our knowledge of what generally happens to fighters, it has not resulted in us doing more to take care of people. I think it’s resulted in us as an industry becoming jaded to the usual sad stories,” DiBella said. “Everybody gets damaged. So maybe that's part of the reason. ‘Can't help everybody, right?’ Maybe that’s used in some people’s minds as the rationale for not stepping up to try to do something.”
On the bright side, Christie related that he has recently seen progress in terms of the support for The Ringside Charitable Trust. He said Barry Hearn has begun returning calls and attending meetings. He said Ben Shalom of Boxxer has appeared open to working with the trust. He said he’s seen positive signs from British Boxing Board of Control General Secretary Robert Smith.
And he said that conversations were active and productive with Anthony Joshua about donating, for an upcoming fight, one British pound from every ticket sold to The Ringside Charitable Trust – before Joshua experienced personal tragedy late last year that put his boxing plans on hold.
There are other ways to do this besides the promoter or network agreeing to donate a tiny portion from every sale. Alternatively, when the customer is ordering a pay-per-view, they could see a pop-up to tack on a donation – just like when you’re checking out at the grocery store and the display asks if you want to round up for whatever the local good cause du jour is.
So a fight fan can pay their $74.99 for Fundora-Thurman, and on the Prime Video page or the PPV.com page, they can click the box to donate $2 to the Ring of Brotherhood Foundation.
What person willing to pay $75 for a fight wouldn’t be willing to pay $77? Especially when those $2 make them feel good about themselves or ease whatever guilt they may feel over deriving entertainment from athletes risking their health?
Whether the money comes directly from the fan or is taken from the promoter or network’s cut, it seems a simple way to use the fights of the present to help the fighters of the past.
There exist reasons for resistance: Profit margins may be too thin for some, acknowledging the toll of the sport may be seen as bad business, and paying it forward is not part of the typical fighter’s mindset.
But there’s one reason for some network or promoter to give this a shot, and it outweighs all the reasons not to: because the heroes we once worshipped, the men and women who sacrificed themselves while we cheered, deserve better.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
