To build a sport, they next built a wall.

They built it in Times Square of all places, where, on Friday, it helped conceal a ring and a few hundred exclusive members, while everybody outside was told, “If your name’s not down, you’re not coming in.” 

It was never supposed to be inclusive, only iconic, they said. Instead, it turned out to be neither. It was, that Friday afternoon, just one more demonstration of performance art in New York. It was a cordoned-off crime scene. It was David Blaine in a box. 

Despite its prime location, passersby only heard what was going on inside the walls, and most remained oblivious even when told. In fact, it was only the feeling of being kept out and prevented from seeing something that momentarily roused their curiosity as they walked past. It was then, while dawdling, that they would have been informed there were big screens somewhere and that beyond the wall two men were fighting, at which point some would have shrugged and others reacted with scepticism. They would have said, “If that’s the case, why doesn’t it sound like two men are fighting?” They would have meant the sound of punches landing; the thud of leather on flesh. They would have meant the sound of passionate observers – that is, a crowd. They would have then been told to shut up and keep walking; go home and order the pay-per-view and the video game. 

Later, when it was time to reveal the event’s “impressions” and “traffic” on social media, those same confused bystanders would have been among the reported 400,000 people who “experienced” boxing’s first ever venture in Times Square. Yet, of course, all they did was walk past. They saw not one of the fights. Nor is it likely they will watch any future ones. 

Successful or not, Friday’s wonderfully audacious event in Times Square was the perfect metaphor for boxing in 2025. If it wasn’t enough to alienate the public via pay-per-view, which boxing has been doing for decades, and if it wasn’t enough to keep them out by shifting the action to an app, the sport managed to go one better in New York on May 2. 

Even if the event itself was just a novelty, and not a sign of things to come, the fact remains: they still succeeded in erasing the only people outside the ring who actually elevate the fight-night experience. They suggested in doing so that the presence of fans has no bearing on the overall “success” of an event and that to attend is a privilege, not something a fan deserves for their support and willingness to part with their cash. 

In truth, we knew this already. After all, there is now a decent amount of evidence to indicate that ticket sales do not seem to bother the men running the show in 2025. With money, to them, seemingly no object, and with other reasons to “promote” beyond the traditional, the emphasis on selling tickets is not as strong as before and therefore the role and supposed power of the punter is not what it used to be, either. Now you are priced out, or simply kept out, and you count yourself lucky to attend. The fights will happen regardless of who is there and only boxers with zero self-awareness will admit to missing you when they are being so handsomely rewarded for going through the motions. 

“It felt like a sparring match,” said Ryan Garcia after losing to Rolando Romero in Friday’s main event. “It just didn’t feel authentic to me.

“Once you step in the ring everything fades away. This time I went into the ring and I could hear everybody: Shakur [Stevenson], Richardson [Hitchens]. Everybody was screaming stuff. It was weird. It felt like a weird fever dream. It was so awkward.”

The only surprise last weekend was that so many were surprised that the fights were lacklustre and a few fighters lacked the motivation to fight. Stick two fighters in a box in Times Square, surrounded by people pulling faces from the “Black Hole Sun” video, and what do you expect? Similarly, if you stick Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on at 7 am local time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, what exactly do you think you will see? 

It’s not just the surroundings either. Think, too, about how much these men are now being paid and how the money they make is no longer predicated on their form in the ring or the degree to which they entertain. There is a reason why people like to romanticise the productivity and creativity of the starving artist. There is also a reason why so many people in boxing bring up that old Marvin Hagler line about the difficulty of waking up in silk pyjamas. “These fighters are all spoiled,” said Timothy Bradley last week, and he is right. 

That nobody at the top is currently starving should be celebrated, yes, only the flipside of so much good eating is that not everybody at the top really wants to fight. Truth is, to fight regularly, which was once the key to financial success, is not as vital these days, nor, when it comes time to actually fight, do fighters feel as though they must impress either the paymasters or the fans. For the paymasters, performance is not the be-all and end-all anymore. They have other ways to gauge their version of success and appear to care more about status and clout and a fighter’s presence on social media than all the old metrics. In terms of the fans, meanwhile, the need to impress them has never been less important than it is today. They are, in certain venues, merely window dressing; mannequins. What does it matter if everybody outside the ringside barrier goes home a little unsatisfied with what they have just witnessed?

Ultimately, the only people who count are those within the barriers and inside the walls: the fighters, the financiers, the cheerleaders, the influencers. When together, packed into the same exclusive space, you have quite the club. In Times Square, it evoked one of those big-crowd-in-a-small-room scenes from a Marx Brothers film, where everybody jostles for position and a bit more prominence. It’s still infighting, only it’s different now. More genial. Less honest. 

I suspect, if they shared an elevator and one of them happened to break wind, either nobody in the elevator would acknowledge the smell or, conversely, they would all try to break wind to claim responsibility for it. In that scenario, a publicist might remove the lid from a bottle of Cherry Freeze Prime and aim to capture the smell. A reporter might ask the guilty backside how it felt before tweeting “sources confirm…” A younger reporter might ask the same backside whether a hundred farts could defeat a gorilla. Somebody from Netflix might even suggest a six-part whodunnit. 

Within that confined space, or echo chamber, such behaviour will be considered perfectly normal. It is only when the elevator then opens on the ground floor and an outsider gets a brief glimpse inside it that the image of various people gathered around a man’s backside would be viewed as something else. 

Friday in New York was a bit like that. It was something they had protected, just perhaps not enough. Perhaps, on reflection, it would have been a better idea to have it untelevised and enforce a ban on phones, so that nobody anywhere got the chance to see what was happening. Make it truly exclusive, like one of those things that takes place on an island somewhere or in one of those big LA mansions. Run it the same way you would a sex party which requires a mask and a password and from which all evidence is kept for bribery purposes at a later date. 

Alas, because it was filmed and shown live, we saw everything. We saw the ambition of it all, which should be applauded, and we saw the reality of it all, which revealed why nobody had tried to do it before. 

We were also reminded of how consumer habits have now changed and how our role, as consumers of fights, is different in 2025. Now, whether you like it or not, you watch a lot of fights on screens, either big or small, just as you watch films over your phone on streaming services promising no ads until they need more money. You watch fights the way you order food, by tapping an app, and you shrug with indifference when it arrives cold and damp and isn’t quite the same as when served on a plate. You then admire the people providing you this slop because they are rich and powerful and you ignore how their personal ambitions are entirely at odds with, and detrimental to, the betterment of the collective. You will, finally, say thank you and leave a five-star review, for fear of not having access to the experience next time. 

Because let’s be honest: it’s not all bad, is it? Some elements of change and gentrification can be positive and, in boxing, have been welcomed. There has, for example, been a push to ensure the best fight the best, which has led to Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury (twice), Dmitry Bivol vs. Artur Beterbiev (twice), and Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford, now set for September. There has also been a load of money pumped into the sport, which has benefitted not only the boxers, the ones who deserve it, but many at ringside for whom the future was looking bleak before someone grabbed their hand and said, “Look, you tried, but we’ll take it from here.” 

For these people, the sport’s new direction and makeover is only a good thing. It’s why at ringside you tend to see so many frozen smiles nowadays and why enemies are more than happy to hold hands and tongues. For these people, the invited, there is nothing really to worry about except for what they say, how they act, and the possibility of ruining a good thing by speaking out of turn. There is certainly no need to think too hard about the fan experience, the long-term future of the sport, or what Groucho Marx meant when he said: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”