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Home » ESPN blasted, accused of trolling fans with YouTuber knockout award

ESPN blasted, accused of trolling fans with YouTuber knockout award

ESPN’s Ringside faction faced accusations of trolling boxing fans for naming a YouTuber their Boxing Knockout of the Year for 2021.

Complaints rolled in many responses stating ESPN Ringside was merely naming the ‘influencer’ either as baiting or simply as a joke.

Whatever the case may be, the non-boxer took an award he should never have even been in the running for at any point in time.

Former Floyd Mayweather fighter and super-welterweight champion Ishe Smith revealed his disgust.

“Honestly, it’s a disgrace y’all even put this on the ballot,” said Smith. “A guy who doesn’t fight real boxers and the other guy isn’t a boxer at all.

“Why don’t y’all give Rocky the lifetime achievement award next?”

He added: “No hate on [YouTuber], but there was some great KOs this year from real fighters. But we give a guy who has yet to fight one real fighter KO of the year.

“As I said previously, boxing is in a peculiar place right now. Quite frankly, it sucks!”

KNOCKOUT BRAZENNESS

WBN has to agree with Smith on this one. The decision by ESPN reeks of bandwagon-jumping for the millennial generation.

Choosing that farce over the likes of Oscar Valdez and Gabe Rosado stinks. ESPN should be ashamed of their unapologetic brazenness even to submit it for voting.

World Boxing News will be announcing our award winners in the current days, and there won’t be a vlogger insight.

Anyway, boxing will finally get a break from the ongoing circus that goes with the current YouTuber moonlighting as a professional boxer.

The sport’s three-monthly clown show is on hold as the vlogger takes time away for a promised seven-month period. Hopefully, it will be much longer than that.

Good riddance.

The views expressed in this article are opinions of Phil Jay.

Phil Jay – Editor of World Boxing News since 2010 with over one billion views. Follow WBN on Twitter @WorldBoxingNews.