Canelo vs. Crawford starting at 1 a.m. was a huge mistake

I’m told that boxing used to be one of the big three American sports. For a small chunk of my early life, the sport was somewhat in the vicinity of that.

That’s very much not the case today. It’s also unlikely to change anytime soon, considering the one must-see and actually accessible fight of this calendar year started at 12:56 a.m. ET.

The average American goes to bed at 11:21 p.m., although on weekend nights, it is often a bit later. By the time this weekend’s match between Canelo Álvarez and Terence Crawford ended around 2 a.m. ET, you’re looking at probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the country being asleep, taking into account time zones.

Fight times that are dragged out and start too late have long been an issue for the sport, and even Dana White, the promoter of Saturday night’s Sunday morning’s fight, acknowledged how dumb it is.

I had held out some hope that perhaps the fight would start at a reasonable hour based on some of White’s comments in his interview with Max Kellerman.

“I like when the night moves fast,” said White. “Right now, when you watch a boxing event, they’ll have one fight, then there’s a podcast. Then there’s another fight, and there’s a podcast, and the night gets dragged out. It’s bad enough for the people at home watching on TV. The people that are live, it has to be insane.

“So, my thing is, all the talk is done, right? You’ve had all this promotion leading up to the event. You don’t need to run on for 45 minutes talking about the fight. All the talk is over. All the predictions, the back-and-forth, we’ve been doing this now for months. People want to see the fight that night. Let’s go: Boom, boom, boom. Let’s get through the night, and make it quick, and keep that energy up.”

The last undercard fight wrapped up at 12:16 a.m., so even if White made good on his promise of “Let’s go: Boom, boom, boom,” this was already trending to be a very late night.

In between 12:16 a.m. and the main event, viewers were treated to footage of various celebrities in attendance, a few minutes of conversation between Mario Lopez and Mark Wahlberg about boxing, five minutes of ads mostly from Cash App, DraftKings, and title sponsor Riyadh Season, which is “a series of entertainment, cultural, and sporting events held in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh” (We’re not even gonna touch that one).

At 12:26 a.m., a clock displaying a five-minute countdown appeared on the screen. I knew it was bullshit, but when a man has a parlay at 9:1 odds that needs Crawford to win to hit, we go on undeterred.

What followed was a two-minute breakdown of various bets sponsored by DraftKings, which included mentions of odds being “pretty juicy,” another round of ads, and finally a promo video narrated by Max Kellerman at 12:32 a.m. ET.

There was a series of songs and concerts before the boxers made it to the ring.  Around 12:50 a.m., I got a call from a friend I told to watch the fight and bet on Crawford. He was in the Mountain Time Zone, so not as late, but he wanted to go to sleep.

“When is this thing going to start? They still have their shirts on. We aren’t close if their shirts are still on. People don’t box with their shirts on,” he said.

It wasn’t just my friend who was losing patience, as Barstool’s Jack Mac shared his similar frustrations.

@jackmacmma START THE FIGHT!!! #canelocrawford ♬ original sound – Jack Mac MMA

A tequila ad came at 12:51 as Canelo entered the ring. For whatever reason, the ad had no sound. Five minutes later, we had finally made it. It was time for boxing. The fight was competitive but not spectacular, and included Max Kellerman talking more than anything.

About an hour later, it was done. I had won my parlay. It was past my bedtime and many other people’s bedtime.

This isn’t a new thing. This happens every boxing match. We are told that an event starts at 9:00 p.m. ET. Most people know that it is nowhere near the time it will start. Instead, as White correctly alluded to, it will drag out forever and be a horrible experience.

This fight did have one thing going for it: It was on Netflix, meaning it didn’t carry the high price tag of a PPV and was more accessible to tens and hundreds of millions more people. You can connect boxing’s decline to its transition from a mainstream sport to a niche one to the money-grabbing nature of PPV.

Fast forward to today, where we are approaching both WWE and UFC, moving away from the PPV model. Boxing, perhaps under the guidance of Dana White, is staring down a similar path. Whether it’s White or someone else, the sport desperately needs to be shaken up.

Casual sports fans probably watch a couple of boxing matches every five years. Ask the people in your fantasy football league what boxing matches they watched in the last year, and most of them are going to say, “I haven’t watched any.” Ask anyone who is not a boxing diehard to name the current champions across the various weight classes, and you’d be lucky to get two correct names.

Despite being a sport enjoyed by Americans and having tremendous international appeal, boxing has become a tentpole-only sport for most fans. Perhaps Dana White, funded by Saudi Arabia, can rectify that. Or maybe he’s once again talking a big game like he did about this fight starting at a reasonable hour. We’ll see.

If boxing follows the UFC and WWE and becomes accessible without paying $50 or more for the best fights each year, the sport would be wise to rid itself of this self-inflicted limitation of limiting its product to only a sliver of fans who stay up late enough to watch.

Mike Tyson vs. one of the Paul brothers kicked off nearly an hour earlier than Canelo vs. Crawford and concluded by 12:38 a.m. ET. That’s still too late, but much better than being done at around 2 a.m. That “fight” got 60 million viewers. Perhaps Canelo vs. Crawford does more, but even if that’s the case, how many viewers would have watched the fight if it were scheduled at a more optimal time? It doesn’t take a genius to know that 1 a.m. after a busy day of college football, along with a few Power Four college football games still taking place in the evening, severely limits the size of your audience. It also pisses off a considerable percentage of the audience that actually does tune in. What’s wrong with Friday night at 11pm during football season or the same time or a little later on Saturday outside of football season?

Boxing is old school. Boxing is stubborn. Boxing has a chance to make a comeback if it weans itself off of PPV. The question is, will enough people be awake at that hour to see it?