V Perhaps there are in Germany even fewer professional boxers than journalists who write about them. I don’t know. But that the licensed 400 professionals could all live off their sport, perhaps even so well that they would be set for life after their careers, is nothing short of false. In reality hardly anyone has the money that everyone dreams of and that reporters write about, who only have their eyes on the top purses of the top stars.
That, of course, is not a new phenomenon and also affects very successful athletes. In the past, professional boxers still had to sing schlager songs. „The Heart of a Boxer“ was a hit, well: a song by Max Schmeling, who at least became really rich. „Ring frei zur nächsten Runde“ rang out Peter Müller, and René Weller crooned a punchy „Knock him out“. Whoever absolutely did not want to sing had to at least stay silent, like Norbert Grupe alias Prince Wilhelm of Homburg, who answered only the first question on ZDF and then fell silent because he found the interview questions too stupid and too disrespectful.
With the currently well-boxing athletes, not even RTL2 or Sat.1 are knocking. Agit Kabayel, born in Leverkusen, raised in Bochum, is the reigning world heavyweight champion. Abass Baraou, born in Aalen in Württemberg, raised in Oberhausen, is the reigning world champion in the super welterweight. A small, but unfortunately necessary caveat to this information: Kabayel is the interim world champion of the WBC.
You obtain this interim title when the one who is considered the actual world champion cannot or does not want to fight due to injuries, contractual, or other problems. In Kabayel’s case, the boxer whom most people perceive as the heavyweight world champion is Oleksandr Usyk, from Ukraine, who in July defended the heavyweight titles of four associations. But since almost every association offers him a different mandatory challenger, whom he cannot or does not want to box against, the federations thus present an interim solution.
Dudes to Forget
Abass Baraou was also an interim world champion, and before him there was a boxer who was regarded as the current best: Terence Crawford from the USA dominated several weight classes. But when Crawford decided to stay in the light middleweight division, Baraou was promptly proclaimed the WBA super welterweight world champion.
Admittedly, interim world champion is a term that sounds like boxers are guys to forget, and that Baraou and Kabayel can dispel that suspicion, I fear I cannot. But you have to become interim world champion first. In boxing, money is not earned by boxing itself, but by the ability to present oneself as a successful boxer. This explains, for example, why Axel Schulz, who never won a European or World title, but has not insignificant self-marketing abilities, appears on shows under the label “boxing legend”.
Self-Marketing Abilities
In the current „Promi Big Brother“ you find figures like Harald Glööckler, Désirée Nick or Jimi Blue Ochsenknecht. These are all, let’s say: contemporaries who do not hold a world championship title (even though I have heard of these people, because I know quite well the B- to Q-level of celebrity).
Naturally they cannot display anything fashionable (Glööckler), humorous (Nick) or familial (Ochsenknecht) that would be comparable to a world championship title. What these people do have, however, is what is not so common in the profession of German boxers today.
