I’m not too much of a tough guy to admit that, in quiet moments, I can sometimes be wracked with self-doubt. When I’m not busy fighting off waves of bullshit and defending my own site against repeated hacking efforts by people totally NOT tied to media or boxing industry people I’ve criticized in the past, I do a significant amount of soul searching.
This past week was one of those times as I’m struggling to re-start my own site, www.theboxingtribune.com, after a somewhat successful run a few years back that originally ended when I could no longer afford to defend myself against the constant hacking attacks.
I couldn’t help but feel that I was sacrificing valuable, essential clicks and views-- and, in turn, losing out on potential money-- by not jumping on a few stories that popped up and were being prominently featured on major boxing sites.
For instance, there was the story about Tank Davis-Lamont Roach possibly being put off from its reported December 14 date due to venue issues and then potentially being paired with the David Benavidez-David Morrell bout in a late January pay-per-view.
I bit on the former story, posting my, um, unique personal thoughts on the story broken by Dan Rafael on Twitter. There was enough there to at least share my feelings on that one.
I didn’t bite on the latter Tank story, which was published by Boxingscene and used the nebulous “Two individuals connected to the business of Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis” as its sources.
Other sites and writers DID bite on that twin bill tale. They talked up the Tank-Roach/Benavidez-Morrell pairing as if it were an actual thing currently being looked at when not even the dubiously-sourced original Boxingscene article made such an assertion. That BS piece merely quoted one of the unnamed sources as saying that the twin bill, if it happened, “becomes a big event then.”
The article’s title, though, tells a different story, one where Tank-Roach/Benavidez-Morrell “could” happen.
I mean, yeah, it COULD happen. But Tank COULD also retire. He COULD become a race car driver. He COULD fight that rainbow-wigged UFC creep. He COULD shit in his hand on Instagram Live and fling it at the camera while singing Celin Dion’s “My heart will go on” in a silly falsetto. A lot COULD happen. Imagine all the bandwidth wasted on reporting on everything and anything that COULD happen.
But, from “could,” media pushed it to “might.” Then, it was being “eyed.”
Fans, who never seem to learn that boxing’s establishment media is not to be taken seriously, celebrated and argued online about the great show in the works.
However, Davis, himself, put all that to rest with a one-word response to the story on social media: “Cap.”
There were other “fake news” stories floating around this slow news week.
One had Vergil Ortiz-Jaron Ennis in a twin bill with Bam Rodriguez-Chocolatito Gonzalez. The Ortiz-Ennis one had especially long legs as it was even reported that the junior welterweight bout was being “eyed” for a February 22 date in Saudi Arabia. Really, though, what the fuck does “eyed” even mean...and who, exactly, is doing the “eyeing?” I’ve been “eyeing” Shakira for 20 years now, but I’m not one baby-step closer to bedding her. Whatever the case, just about everyone with any actual connection to the fighters in question has refuted that Ortiz-Ennis story.
There was also some new media clutter regarding the long-rumored, never affirmed Manny Pacquiao vs. Mario Barrios story which pops up, apparently, whenever some writer is stuck for an idea and/or needs to show his editor that he can generate clicks. Manny Pacquiao-Mario Barrios was now “on the rocks”-- as if Barrios being scheduled to fight someone else on November 15 as Pacquiao heads into his reelection campaign in the Philippines didn’t already mean that the Pacquiao-Barrios boat had been crashed to bits “on the rocks.”
This media madness is enough to give an honest man “rocks” in his gizzard.
But the only ones who lost out on these non-stories were those of us who didn’t report on them. We lost the traffic and the ad revenue that comes with the clickbait. The other sites, which knowingly passed off this nothingness as actually something, won’t lose a bit of credibility. Boxing fans really don’t seem to have a memory when it comes to people and companies who have insulted their intelligence for the sake of (literally) just a few bucks.
I get the media when it comes to this kind of stuff. I really do. A guy's gotta keep his job. He’s gotta produce CONTENT that brings clicks. And, these days, he’s gotta create more and more of that CONTENT to actually get paid. Traffic is down for boxing websites, across the board. Per my internet media/SEO nerd sources, one major site has actually lost three-quarters of its traffic over the last year or so. So, the engines have to be grinding to keep the lights on.
But maybe, just maybe, traffic is down because more and more fans are sick of speculative bullshit presented as news and they’re frustrated by promotion being passed off as journalism. Maybe the right strategy for these boxing media people was to NOT sell their sites (and their credibility along with it) to boxing promoters who use them as a branch of their public relations department.
It’s tough being heard in this business and it’s an especially daunting task to be heard when your message runs contrary to the promotion-as-news state of the business. The temptation is there to go all-out clickbait and just toss out a bunch of eye-catching crap to grab some cheap attention. I’ve caught myself giving in to that temptation.
But I fight off that urge, even when ad revenue falls into the cents for a day’s work and the reality starts to set in that, very soon, I may no longer be able to do this boxing writing thing anymore.
Ultimately, though, what’s the point of making a living as a writer and having a platform to speak when the only thing that keeps you solvent is shilling for the powers that be and/or posting straight up bullshit?
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com