Some sports are generational. They do not translate to younger crowds. Think about things 50 years ago. In New York City you could see a heavyweight fight at Yankee stadium, watch the Preakness and then see a Yankee's game all in the same weekend. Now a person in their mid-20s would rather watch an MMA pay-per view event, the World Series of Poker and then a football game. My point is not all sports transcend the times. It is glaringly obvious in boxing and horse racing, both of which are irrelevant in today's mass media, but even baseball is an old timer sport. So my question is can boxing be saved? Or will MMA and UFC continue to dominate? What can be done, if anything, to save and revive boxing?

I'm not sure that boxing needs saving, like it's going to be extinct soon.  I do agree that MMA is probably more appealing to mainstream fans.  There aren't any huge stars in boxing right now like Ray Leonard or Oscar De La Hoya (I think Pacquiao is probably the biggest right now, but he is still a little short of those two).  Boxing also doesn't make as many "big fights that need to happen" as MMA does (too many titles in boxing is a big contributer to this).  Even with that said though, I don't know that it's in danger of losing all it's fans to MMA.

You were dead on with how boxing isn't as big as it was 50 or 100 years ago.  The heavyweight champion of the world used to be the most popular athlete there was (I think I've heard that Dempsey was bigger with sports fans as a whole than Ruth was).

Yeah The heavyweight champ was almost always the most recognizable athlete in the world. I don't think boxing will ever be extinct, it's too much a part of our culture and the history of the sport is truly fascinating. The core of the fan base will be there, by save I meant return to prominence.

There are just too many divisions, governing bodies, championship belts and promoters getting in the way. I think boxing is like baseball and MMA is like football. One is outdated and not willing to make changes, while the other continues to change and mold its product into a tv friendly viewing format. Boxing really needs to change how it operates to be succesful again. Also, with the rise of the NFL a lot of athletes are dismissing the boxing gym for the more lucrative opportunities in football.

I can agree with the comparison of boxing & baseball to MMA & football to a degree (I don't think baseball is really doing as bad as boxing is in comparison to what they used to be).  I think a factor that people should recognize is how much control the UFC (I can't really use the term MMA because no other organization has proven to get it done like the UFC has to date) & the NFL have over their product.  I'm not sure the UFC can keep it up as long as the NFL can though.  Eventually fighters in MMA will probably have as much freedom to make as much money as they can as boxers do.  I think the NFL will probably be successful for a long time.

By the way, I agree one hundred percent about there being "too much" going on in boxing.  There are too many weight divisions and too many titles (I do think the titles are more of a problem than the amount of weight classes).  The funny thing is that I believe MMA needs a few more weight classes, but I don't think it will be that big of a deal.

I just hope a Mayweather/Pacquiao fight can ignite the public interest in the sport. I had a friend say last night that if Mayweather beats Pacquiao and then retires right after the fight that he would be th greatest of all time. The only response I could come up with was "no one who watches boxing and really knows the history would agree with you."

If that were true then Rocky Marciano would be the greatest heavyweight ever.

The greatest ever, like of all-time? That is pretty ridiculous. For Floyd to go down as the greatest he would have to fight for like 10 more years and beat every top contender convincingly. But if he retires undefeated there will be a bunch of idiots that know nothing about the sport, Floyd being the number 1 idiot, claiming that he is the best.

I'm going to take a different view on this...From what I can just see in Canada, boxing is dying not just because of what is happening in the ring or the amount of alphabet belts, but it's the change in the North American culture.
 40 yrs ago (when I was young), when a boy came home with his first "black eye" from his first fight, the cops weren't called, lawyers weren't paged, psycologists weren't booked. That night when his father got home, they would go out to the shed or go to the basement pull out the old, limp, wholely, boxing gloves that dad's father had used & dad would teach you the 1-2-1, stick & move, and if dad wasn't a beleiver in the "Marquess of Queensberry Rules", he would show ya a couple of moves that would give you the edge.
In the town I grew-up in we had a few boxing clubs, but now they are all gone!
 School's have panic attacks when ever kids have a fight, police are called regularly. Parents freak-out, doctors want to put the "offenders" on mood altering drugs!
 There was a time where boxing was taught to everyone in North America & Europe. Boy's gym classes had it in High School...So when the youth aren't being encouraged to be involved in a sport, it tends to die off over a generation or 2.

 If you look at who are the champions & what areas of the world they are from, you'll see the majority are third world countries that still hold boxing in high regard! Champions are the heros of the little kids who want to grow-up & be a champ like them...We are breading boxing out of our culture.

I like your take on the topic, it was interesting. It is impossible to ultimately detrmine if the lack of boxing gyms and school programs is because the kids are not interested, or if the kids are not interested because they do not have access to gyms and school programs.

Squatch, by your logic the UFC would also be struggling. I just think there are to many other sports that boxing has to compete with. We live in an NFL country and most talented young athletes want to play either football or basketball.

Not really Tim if you apply the same logic, in the same time frame you'll find (or at least I did) an explosion of Marshal Arts schools as the boxing schools were closing. as the years passed Hollywood glorified MA through movies, computer games were made ("Street Fighter") geared for kids, YouTube "back alley fights", & the thing that nailed it for UFC, "Reality TV" plus the parents dis-approval...Remember this is my opinion of North American Boxing.
 But back to the question, "Can Boxing be saved"...It is fine in Mexico, Central & South America, The Philippines, & Africa. Once there's a young, "Strong" US Heavyweight Champion again that grows interest again it can comeback again in the US. But I doubt it will ever comeback here in Canada. It will stumble a long in the same way the CFL does, pockets of support across the country (like Montreal), but it won't return to the "mainstream".

I was referring to the argument about people going crazy when kids fight.