New or rennovated restaurants can regularly engage in activities known as "soft-openings".

 

A "soft-opening" is when an establishment opens their doors to the public with no fanfare or media push in order to work out the kinks prior to the "grand opening."

 

A restaurant would do this in order to alleviate potentially giving off a bad first impression to a would-be long-time customer. Solid eating establishments have been buried rating's wise when they open prematurely suffering the critical wrath of the perfectionist diner.

 

It is no secret that certain days of the week provide better dining experiences than others within the same restaurant. Most managers can attest to this and would recommend preferred customers to experience the dining experience at certain hours of certain days for optimal enjoyment.

 

If creating a positive first impression were a priority to a restaurant manager, they'd hardly recommend their own establishment to a potential customer knowing that the steak had gone rancid or the beer was pouring flat. They'd usually wait until the faults had been worked out and the problems straightened out.

 

Creating a positive first impression is key as most within the entertainment industry understand that there are virtually an infinite number of outlets in which the consumer can spend their dollars. A bad first impression can not only affect the person or entities that experienced it, it can lead to those people down-grading the outlet to others.

 

Now we have boxing...

 

The Boxing Truth is comprised of myself and Ricardo Lois.

 

We've always been of the mind-frame of wanting to see the sport grow and regain levels of popularity that have been lost over the past decade.

 

One of the biggest issues we've noticed over the past several years is the ability to recommend fights to those that don't exactly follow the sweet science.

 

Speaking for myself, I find it counter-productive to recommend boxing matches that fail to deliver sustained action in order to convert the non-boxing fan over to the dark-side.

 

Recommending a lack-luster fight is like asking someone to eat at a restaurant knowing that the entire place is overrun with cock-roaches and rats. 

 

It will be much more difficult to get that same potential consumer in the door a second time after a horrid first experience.

 

I don't and would not blame them.

 

Having a quick chat session with a long-time boxing fan named, "Mr. Pain" yesterday regarding this issue, he stated, "Who cares about the casual fan! You'll never be able to please them anyhow."

 

This mindset is exactly the reason that boxing's popularity has dwindled in this era compared to decades past.

 

This type of thinking is exactly the reason why American boxing regularly fails to entertain even it's own hardcore fanatics on a regular basis.

 

The NFL, NBA, and MLB focus much of their marketing efforts on cultivating newer, younger, potentially life-long fans of their sports which is something that boxing fails to do based on their weak first impressions.

 

When the most heavily marketed and promoted fights fail to deliver, it merely helps spread the word that boxing is boring and not worth watching.

 

This is completely untrue.

 

Boxing at it's finest is untouchable in terms of entertainment.

 

However, boxing at it's marginal or worse is as bad as a steak house substituting chuck roast from a horse for it's prime grade rib-eye steak.

 

Are we as boxing fans supposed to recommend our own sport knowing that certain match-ups will fail to deliver a positive response?

 

Are we supposed to somehow convince them that the Andre Ward-Allan Green fight was somehow a scientific display of fighting that they must educate themselves on to understand and appreciate?

 

I don't think each and every fight out there recommended needs to be a brutal, "Fight of the Year" affair in order to entertain the non boxing fan.

 

"Cotto-Margarito", "Pavlik-Miranda", "Pavlik-Taylor I", "Pacquiao-Morales I", "Berto-Collazo", "Cotto-Clottey" were all fights over the past several years that didn't receive "Fight of the Year" honors but I know for a fact that they were considered greatly entertaining by numerous casual fanatics.

 

This whole thing is just a question I have for you as hardcore boxing fans... do we recommend each and every fight out there spreading the word about the sport even though the match-ups will ultimately fail to deliver... or, do we wait for better match-ups to take place and then promote it to non-boxing fans?

 

You tell me.