The Wonderful World of Digital Boxing Media: The Keyboard Strikes Back?

The Wonderful World of Digital Boxing Media: The Keyboard Strikes Back?

Every good first instalment deserves a sequel. I’m not sure if that fits here, but regardless of the merits of my first piece on the subject, I am back with another little look at that sometimes controversial world of the new boxing media. The online world will no doubt tell me if we have an Empire Strikes Back or a Grease 2 on our hands.

It is a solo expedition this time. Craig Scott has gone from the biggest free agent in the sport to the sport’s most wanted man. Mr Scott has a little hobby you see, Contaminated Food. The views are on the rise. It even hit double figures this week. Every Monday evening, he lets the poison out of the bottle. Trust me, I’ve been there. A wanted man indeed. I now need to keep my distance. It’s not good for either of us to be seen together.

My sources tell me he was open to another return to FightPost, despite those same sources telling me he is currently deep in training for a fight with Sam Jones on a forthcoming Misfits card. While I can neither confirm nor deny those rumours, I nevertheless look forward to the press conference where chests will be bared and deep-fried Mars Bars and cans of Irn-Bru will be hurled.

Steve from Boxing UK is also absent this time. Is that really his name? I’ve known him for years, and that is how I know him. How he makes me address him. Is he a big fan of Barry from Eastenders? What did happen to Night Fever, that rather strange karaoke Channel Five show with Suggs at the helm. I understand Barry is still grafting on the karaoke circuit. Is there really such a thing? Apparently so.

Mr Boxing UK is like me, one of the elder statesmen of the boxing media, I am sure I once heard Colin Hart at a show saying, “Why have they let them two dinosaurs in.” I thought of asking him back for a second appearance, but after seeing a recent tweet where he was asking to go on TalkSport it left me feeling he has now moved on to bigger and better things. Press Row will now be a far lonelier experience for me. Statler or Waldorf have now gone their separate ways. The Hale and no Pace double-act is no more, it seems.

I did think of contacting Mr Boxing himself, Rob Tebbutt. But would he really pick up the phone for me? Mr Tebbutt is a busy man, of course, he is. He’s going for complete domination of the boxing world, and what with opening every new branch of Sliders ‘R’ Us it leaves little time for anything else. Barry Jones was another consideration. But I find rejection incredibly hard to deal with, and I didn’t want to be known as owning the only boxing media outlet that Barry Jones wouldn’t work for.

So it’s just Mark from FightPost. Hopefully, Steve and Barry will approve of my new moniker. So, in a shameful little bit of plagiarism, if this is your first time here, ‘This is FightPost, come on in.’ A little shout-out to boxing’s much-loved Hairy Biker.

I touched on the YouTube side of the new digital media world last time out. This time, I take a little walk around the written word. Yes, it still exists. A dying art sadly, but we haven’t quite flatlined yet.

Boxing still has more than its fair share of journalist heavyweights that still employ the written word. The likes of Donald McRae, Thomas Hauser, Carlos Avecedo, Elliot Worsell, Tris Dixon, Craig Scott, and others still give us work that deserves the time of day. But while many still dabble, the quality is most certainly on the decline.

There are outlets that still practice the fine art, but while McRae, Hauser, Scott and the rest give us gourmet content, most seem happy to produce content akin to the world of fast food.

The trend of recent times is to serve up wafer-thin articles that need little brain investment. A grab-and-go attitude to producing written content. A few minutes to write. A few seconds to read. Easily absorbed. Quickly forgotten. It might generate the required clicks, but is our attention span that poor, and are we that easily satisfied. Evidently so. Where is the depth? Where is the insight? Where is the pride in your work?

Many of the outlets that still use the written word only want the clickbait fluff. Picking out a few lines from an interview from another platform and using another few hundred meaningless page-filling words to surround that article. That isn’t being creative. It is being lazy. If I read something, I want to learn something or be made to think and not read a piece just thinking why have I bothered to read it in the first place.

We have seen when the likes of Hauser and McRae dare touch on a subject that’s uncomfortable to the perceived narrative, and the subsequent venom that comes with such a piece. Both were subjected to unwarranted abuse because of their articles on Anthony Joshua and Conor Benn, especially from those who rule the sport.

Elliot Worsell touched on this in his article in Boxing News when he wrote:

‘There is, for an under-fire boxer or promoter, arguably no greater sight than that of a giddy member of the “new media” carrying both a camera and an adoring smile. Primed to be groomed, many of these people will not even be aware of the fact that by being so grateful for whatever it is they are being told, they are, without meaning to, enabling the deceit and becoming part of the problem.’

There is a lack of real scrutiny in boxing. The powers that be want to control and manipulate what is said and what is asked. Those who dare take a step forward into the world of real journalism often pay some kind of price. Is the harshness and brutality of such critique just a way of telling said writers to get back in their box and play ball nicely. Or you don’t play at all. Threats of legal letters are never far away. The truth comes at a price.

As Worsell also wrote, many of the new media are willingly complicit in the deceit. Outlets and accounts are brazenly and unashamedly biased toward certain fighters and promotions. Selective writing and reposting can’t be called journalism. It more than enters the grounds of PR and influencing. Is it out of favouritism, or the need to protect or gain access and influence? People will draw their own conclusions. It becomes more about the perceived self-importance of the alleged journalist.

Worsell also drew the wrath of many for what he wrote back in April. The truth is often hard to handle.

The never-ending Conor Benn saga is the perfect example. It shouldn’t be about celebrating your favourite fighter from your favourite promotion getting off. It should be about the search for the truth and not searching for a loophole to hide an inconvenient truth. I just want to know if Benn doped or not. Cleared to fight and unequivocally cleared of doping are two completely different things. Too many want him to fight on regardless. That is wrong. How many outlets pressed on the jurisdiction side of that argument, and I mean pressed and not just ask one question and be led too willingly down a different path to avoid answering that question. All we want is the truth. Why is that so hard to get? Hopefully, we all get what we need. And soon.

Worsell is one of the rare gems in the sport. He doesn’t care too much about what people think. He just writes what he thinks. The sport is a lot better place with him in it. Sadly, writers like Worsell are becoming an endangered species. Craig Scott has formulated an original concept with his Contaminated Food segment on his own website Boxing Zombie. It is a refreshing change from the mundane that litters the sport. It upsets many in the sport and with good reason. It gets incredible traction and highlights everything that is wrong with the sport. It also highlights how the written word can still play an important role in boxing.

Rob Tebbutt got it right in his days at Boxing Social. A combination of video content that was actually worth watching and excellent long-piece written features. Tebbutt migrated most of the old Boxing Monthly brigade over, and the quality of the writing and the results were obvious. Tebbutt, now in the Boxing News stable, has taken it a step further. There are, of course, other outlets that offer similar one-stop content for all, but they are in the minority.

McRae, Dixon, and many, many others have given us timeless pieces of work over the years. Only recently, Dixon has written one of the most important books in the history of the sport in Damage. Everyone involved in the sport should be made to read it, trust me, it is that good and that important. But in ten years or more, will a book like that be written at all. I have my doubts. A twenty-page offering of The Thirty Best Tweets of Tony Bellew is far more likely, with a little introduction by Eddie Hearn. Is that really the future? Once McRae, Dixon, Worsell, and the rest have gone, who will replace them? That is perhaps the biggest worry of all. I was brought up on the delights of Hugh McIlvanney and Harry Mullan. What have future generations got to look forward to? Books with Brutally Honest in the title? You pay your money, open the book and you are extremely disappointed with what you find. Never judge a book by the cover, they say. Maybe, we should.

Video content is the future, there is no getting away from that and that world provides a lot of really good content and gives the sport the type of coverage it badly needs especially when the mainstream press have largely turned their backs on the sport. But writing will undoubtedly suffer because of it. The market will ultimately dictate what type of future it has. With paid positions extremely limited in boxing, writers of any note will simply look elsewhere for work. But there is still a place for the written word. The hope is, it finds it. And quickly.