By Norm Frauenheim-
There’s not much to do while trying to honor a stay-at-home order. There’s music. There’s yard-work. There’s listening to pundits and Trump’s lies and wondering if ear plugs would help. They’re probably not much protection from the virus, but maybe they’ll silence the misinformation and the idiocy.
Mostly, there’s just counting the cancellations. Wednesday, it was Wimbledon. Thursday, it was an extension of the California State Athletic Commission’s cancellation of boxing through the end of May.
None of it is a surprise anymore. It’s just another couple of depressing drumbeats in the funeral-like march of news about escalating deaths and a rising rate of infection. It’s beginning to sound as if everybody will be wearing masks before long. Nobody seems to know if they’ll stop the virus. But they will hide the frowns.
What’s next? Who knows? Nobody seems to know. As a sportswriter, you live a life measured by seasons and events. Opening Day, Opening Ceremonies, opening tip, opening bell. Now, they’re all gone, postponed once and then twice. After a while, you wonder what they’ll look like when and if the virus subsides.
It’ll be different. Best guess is that the days of big money — or to use today’s operative term – have been postponed for the foreseeable future. Who’s working? Disposable income? How about any income at all?
For boxing, that’s especially problematic. Who’s going to have money for streaming services, much less pay-per-view? Not many, at least not for a while. Meanwhile, there are the fighters themselves. If they don’t fight, they don’t get paid. Journeymen, boxing’s vital working class, will move on to something where there is a paycheck.
“There’s always a fallout from this kind of stuff, you know, that changes the landscape of a business or the sport,” UK promoter Eddie Hearn told iFL TV this week.
Hearn is trying to foresee something positive. The shutdown, he believes or perhaps hopes, will force promoters and fighters to re-think how they do business. Above all, it’s an urgent reminder of just how vulnerable any opportunity is. Don’t waste it.
“I think how this will change is you’ll see fighters being moved into bigger fights quicker,’’ Hearn said. “I think that people will realize sometimes things aren’t guaranteed, nothing is given, and rather than having a warm-up fight or having this one first or this little one, I think people will be looking to have bigger fights.”
Maybe.
But they’ll have to be willing to fight for less, maybe a lot less, than the staggering purses before coronavirus. Post COVID-19, the world figures to be a very different place.
“It’s gonna be difficult,” Hearn said. “You know, when you come back – whether it’s June, whether it’s July – don’t just expect the whole world to go back to normal.’’
Best guess?
Expect a lot less.
