(JUNE 29) WBAN has published
the
stats from 1993-2012 that Dee Williams has been
keeping in the sport. Dee Williams has been, and
continues to be an invaluable source for WBAN, and the sport.
We have updated this trend by adding the boxer count by year
for the same four countries as before.
The stats from 1993 to 2012, show us an interesting trend that
is going on in the sport. The information was converted from an
Excel Spreadsheet and it contains our number of fights per
quarter data for the whole world, and for USA, Germany,
Argentina and Mexico. The graph of the data for the four
separate countries really tells the story of what's happened.
Huge growth of the pro sport in the USA peaked about 10 years
ago in 2002. Sport has slowly fallen off here ever since. The
German boom came later and peaked five years later, about 2007.
It looked for a while like the activity there could equal that
in the US by 2008, instead they peaked too and are now falling
off fast.
Possible reason perhaps? Regina Halmich fought her last fight in
November 2007, and her boxing career was what propelled the
German boom up until then.
Williams' stats indicate that the sport is still growing
worldwide but only barely, and that's because the big decline in
the old power houses like the USA and Germany has been offset by
rapid growth in South America, especially in Argentina and in
Mexico. There are now more women's pro fights per quarter in
Mexico than there are here in the USA, and the number of fights
in Argentina is about the same as here.
It's a bit simplistic to boil it down to four countries, but
those four do tell the basic story of where the sport has grown
and why. The rapid growth in the USA happened while Christy
Martin was at her prime, the peak came right when Laila Ali
started to fight world title fights, and the sport was already
in decline here in terms of number of fights by the time she
ended her run. In Mexico, they have been paced by the likes of
Jackie Nava and Ana Maria Torres, the Argentinians first by
Marcela Acuna and now the younger generation there of Yesica
Bopp, Erica Farias etc.
Williams said, "I think the quality of the fights has steadily
improved, the skills levels are still increasing, and the best
fights are getting better, quite independent of these overall
fight frequency numbers the top competition everywhere continues
to improve. But where you're going to have to go to face that
top competition could be about to change."
It could also change if we see the popularity of amateur boxing
among women boxers feed into
the pro sport, as the amateurs are generally being dominated by
different countries than the pros,
One thing for sure that will be very interesting is to see is
which countries produce the Olympic medalists and whether that
has any effect on trends in the pros a few years later.
Another reason why we have the fall-off in the USA, could be due
to with the rise of women's MMA. It is hard to say at this
point.
Please note that on the graph, that 2012/Q2 stats are still
being added to as there are two weekends left in the quarter, so
the last points on all the graphs are a little low and we won't
get final numbers for a few weeks more.
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