Look at the glory years of boxing. It was pretty much the only widely televised sport of personal combat in the world. Too, boxing was ‘the man’s’ style of personal combat…a boxer was the best fighter around.
Now, we live in a world of martial arts, where boxers are considered a monolinear dinosaur at best. The seeds were sown when the first boxing vs judo vs wrestling vs kung fu exhibitions were made, and when martial art movies in the east starting opening eyes around the world to all the other fighting styles out there.
Boxers don’t become boxers anymore. Boxing is a subset of Mixed Martial Arts, and those people who are serious about wanting to see ‘real’ fighting skills are being increasingly drawn away in numbers from pure boxing to the MMA bouts that include boxing as one of the forms they practice.
So I’d say boxing’s decline is only partially from the promoter/publication/electronic age embroglio. It’s been muscled out of the way by a worldwide interest in real fighting ability not limited to just fists.

==RED