Comedians, influencers and footy players: Why we can’t get enough of celebrity boxing

One of the greatest boxers of all time was in Australia recently.

Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford, a world champion across four different weight classes and the man who mercilessly ended Jeff Horn’s Cinderella story in 2018, did a six-day speaking tour a couple of months ago to help pre-promote his showdown later this year with Canelo Alvarez.

Oh wait. You missed it? Had no idea? Never even heard of him?

That’s probably because the biggest mismatch Crawford has been involved in is the one between his ability and his profile. Frankly, it’s not even close. He is a wonderful fighter, clean and clinical, quick and powerful, and undefeated in 41 fights, winning 31 by knockout. However, he is also somewhat boring. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does, he doesn’t have much to say. He doesn’t start beef or have hot takes. He is not particularly interesting outside the ring. Crawford just fights, and wins.

A guy like him shouldn’t fly under the radar - he deserves to be a household name - but it’s 2025, and that’s the way it is. He’s one for the boxing purists, and we live in an impure world.

But you probably knew Paul Gallen is fighting Sonny Bill Williams next week - and not just because you are reading this masthead, which is owned by Nine, which also owns Stan, which is broadcasting it on pay-per-view. Or if you didn’t know, the mere mention of those names has probably invoked some level of emotion within you. Most likely negative.

Sonny Bill Williams and Paul Gallen will come face-to-face next week.Credit: Thomas Wielecki

If you hung around long enough on Nine’s post-State of Origin coverage on Wednesday night, you might have seen Gallen call Williams a “weak-gutted dog” - the next level up from “grub”, and by far the greatest of all the rugby league insults.

You may hate the idea of them boxing professionally - although to give Gallen and SBW due credit, in contrast with many of the others on the celebrity circuit, they are at least taking the sport seriously - but you also may watch, if only out of hope that one of them gets embarrassed or hurt. Or both.

At the very least, you may read about who won on Thursday morning, even if by accident.

These fights don’t happen unless there is an audience willing to lap it up. And that audience has always been there, even if those within it will never self-identify as such.

Boxing has long thrived on theatre as much as talent. The hardest part for promoters is making their fighters known, telling their stories, convincing people to care, and getting them invested enough to spend their money.

Drafting in big names from other sports, or even popular culture - with their pre-existing fanbases, narratives and rivalries - is a simple shortcut. Mix in the novelty factor, and there’s easy money to be made. Media companies know there will be clicks and views for such content.

There is surely no other sport like it, where notoriety outweighs skill to the extent that most people would seemingly rather watch relative rookies going at it - or, in some cases, total rookies - instead of the actual best in the world.

Celebrity boxing is hardly a new phenomenon. In 1976, not too far removed from his peak, Muhammad Ali shared the ring with Antonio Inoki, a Japanese professional wrestler who wanted to prove that pro wrestling was the best style of combat.

Jake Paul and Mike Tyson.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

Fought under special rules, in which Ali boxed and Inoki … well, did not box, viewers were treated to the sight of him lying on his back for pretty much the entire bout, kicking Ali in the legs no less than 107 times. It finished in a draw, and though the event was widely panned and considered possibly the lowest ebb of Ali’s career, some regard it as the precursor to what we know today as mixed martial arts. So, there you go.

Ali also went toe-to-toe, so to speak, with NFL player Lyle Alzado (1979), NHL player Dave Semenko (1983) and, all on the same night in 1978, Marvin Gaye, Sammy Davis Jr., Richard Pryor and actor Burt Young, who played Paulie in the Rocky movies.

In this context, rugby league grudge matches don’t seem so bad, do they?

Then, of course, there’s Celebrity Boxing, the TV concept which aired twice in the United States on Fox in 2002, pitting C-graders and lower (often a lot lower) against one another for no apparent reason. Episode one featured Paula Jones, a civil servant who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment, against Tonya Harding.

Fisticuffs: Paul Gallen and John Hopoate had to be separated when tensions bubbled over at their weigh-in. Credit: Janie Barrett

Episode two saw former NBA star Manute Bol take on the ex-NFL defensive tackle William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry - only so that Fox would agree to broadcast the phone number for the Sudanese refugee charity that Bol had established. Bol won, but the show never returned; in any case, it was a pale real-life imitation of Celebrity Deathmatch, its illegitimate claymation forerunner on MTV.

Meanwhile, the BBC attempted a British spin-off around the same time, in which 5.5 million viewers watched Ricky Gervais narrowly lose to businessman Grant Bovey, before pressure from boxing authorities led to it being canned due to safety concerns.

In more recent times, this whole business has come back with a vengeance with a variety of desperately strange match-ups - like the farcical three-round clash between retired basketballer Lamar Odom and the late pop star Aaron Carter in 2021, the year before Carter passed away.

You can largely blame the Paul brothers, Logan and Jake, for enabling the resurgence. They started out scrapping with fellow YouTubers and influencers; one of their amateur fight nights made an estimated $US3.5 million in ticket sales and sold 1.3 million pay-per-views worldwide, making it the biggest non-professional card of all time.

“From a hardcore boxing fan’s point of view, it makes my skin crawl,” famed British promoter Eddie Hearn told TMZ at the time. “But, from a promoter’s point of view, I have to say congratulations.”

The Pauls soon branched out into former MMA fighters, and then finally, actual boxers: in 2021, Logan was schooled by Floyd Mayweather jnr, and just last year, Jake took on a 58-year-old Mike Tyson in what was, at that point, the most-streamed sporting event of all time and the biggest gate in US boxing history outside of Las Vegas. Paul-Tyson was, of course, a shambles, but the clear highlight of the card was the second rematch between Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor, the co-main event. Taylor’s victory was highly contentious, but the spectacle was genuinely awesome, and seen by 50 million households throughout the world, many of them new to the sport - and only because they shared the spotlight with Paul and Tyson.

In Australia, the circuit is dominated by ex-footy players. Some of the cards are glorified sportsmen’s nights. But Gallen has at least measured up against true boxers like Justis Huni, and was once considered Australia’s third-best heavyweight, while Sonny Bill’s boxing links go back as far as 2009, just before his debut in New Zealand rugby. Now their decades-long personal feud - partly legit, partly confected, just like real boxing - can be settled in the ring. It’ll be the last act of both of their athletic careers.

What does this all mean? Boxing has always been a bit of a circus, but now the tent is bigger, the rules are different, and the whole thing plays perfectly in today’s personality-driven media landscape. What matters most is not how many rounds you’ve fought, but how many people want to watch you do it. That might offend the purists, but boxing has never really belonged to them. It belongs to whoever can sell it, and there’s a lesson in that for the so-called sweet science.

Roll your eyes if you want. But don’t hate the players, like Gallen and SBW. Hate the game.

After a decade of bad blood, the Sonny Bill Williams v Paul Gallen grudge match is on.

All the action in a stacked SBW v Gallen card will be streaming live and exclusive on Stan Pay-Per-View on Wednesday 16 July.