The evolution of the boxing press conference

By Elliot Worsell

WHILE it is perhaps not unusual to be informed that a press conference is “open to the public”, it is still strange to comprehend such a thing and indeed consider it completely normal – which, today, it is. Just last week, in fact, there was another press conference about another big fight, which again was being sold – yes, sold – on the basis that it would be “open to the public” and that anyone who is anyone could attend.

This, I can only assume, is done in the hope of drawing a crowd and drumming up interest, but still it strikes me, always, as incongruous, completely at odds with what a press conference is supposed to represent.

Then again, I can also understand it. For if ever you have tried arranging a press conference you will be accustomed to the feeling of trepidation that precedes it. That is, you will know what it is to feel responsible for people turning up and ensuring all those rows of chairs you are planning to set out are, at the designated start time, at least occupied by the backsides of a few journalists.

A job harder than it sounds, often success in this department hinges solely on the magnitude of the fight being pushed. Get a big one, for example, and there is no need to harass the media to attend, nor indeed worry about how many will. Yet, on the other hand, try setting up a press conference for a domestic fight due to take place at a leisure centre and it won’t be long before you are, in a panic, ringing every journalist you know, begging them to show up and in turn spare your blushes.

Those days are tough and invariably you find yourself wishing the hotel ballroom in which the press conference takes place could also cater for a hundred or so fans. They could even have a seat. They could even ask questions and, as so many do today, cosplay as journalists.

There is of course no right or wrong way to do a press conference, just so long as in the end you get from it the required level of interest and publicity you desire. But there has clearly been a shift in the way things are done in recent years, one that has not only reflected the change in the media’s coverage of boxing but has, to some extent, both facilitated and encouraged it.

Which is to say, by bringing fans closer and closer to press row, those running boxing events have moved ever closer to their own utopia: a room full of people just happy to be there, happy to take pictures, happy to see them. In this scenario, there will be no tough questions, no search for either the truth or even any insight, and no need, on the part of the promoter, to be anything other than a performer playing to a handpicked crowd of family and friends.

The big change, in this respect, is all to do with gratitude, I suppose. For whereas in years gone by there was always a sense that a press conference consisted of a top table full of people grateful for the media who had attended and would, by attending, do the promoting on their behalf, now one gets the impression that these roles have reversed. Now what you tend to have is a room full of people grateful to be in the presence of their favourite boxers and promoters (no, really), each of them less interested in reporting on what is happening than they are tweeting about it, just to show they were there.

This dynamic is then only strengthened when you consider how boxers and promoters, by dint of social media, no longer rely on the work of journalists the way they once did. In their eyes, all the selling they can now do themselves; a belief never greater than today, in fact, when even promoters have outsourced the promoting to money men in the Middle East.

If this is true, a press conference becomes no more than a chore, or just something to get through. For the younger ones, it hopefully retains at least some of its appeal, but for the older ones, those whose social media following trumps the reach of anyone listening to them speak at a press conference, it becomes very much a box-ticking exercise, an ordeal to endure.

Which is fine, by the way. Who really wants to be grilled or forced to think beyond cliches in public anyway? Far better, for them, to have their own promoter, someone who will always have their back, feed them softball questions for TV and for YouTube. Far better to give as little of themselves away as possible and save the good stuff for the ‘gram. 

Besides, given it is now a mostly visual sport, there are other characters to do the heavy-lifting on their behalf. If not the promoter, there is the host. There is the manager. There is the dad. Each of these characters, regardless of their relevance or intelligence, are capable these days of selling an event every bit as well as the actual fighters involved. Why? Because in the end the only ones buying it are giddy fans – phones in the air, caps lock on – just grateful to have been invited and happy to be there.