PLATFORM:IN 1971, MUHAMMAD Ali and Joe Frazier went 15 rounds at Madison Square Garden in the self-styled fight of the century and the first of a trilogy culminating in the Rumble in the Jungle, the most watched sporting event ever.

Ali was 29, and came in to the fight undercooked; Army service had taken three years of his career. The fight was brutal with Frazier knocking down Ali in the 15th and final round to cement a deserved points victory.

The bout and its broader cultural significance was famously captured by Norman Mailer, writing in Life magazine.

Interviewed years later, Frazier said the thing he remembered most about that night was "how the limousines stretched all the way from downtown to uptown, all the way to 110th Street".

The man whose parents were sharecroppers, recalls, "how I wanted to win, how I had to win and how everybody around the world cared about the fight".

Until very recently, such a thought was fanciful. Boxing has been marginalised, its place at the centre of social and cultural affairs a distant memory. There is no better illustration of this point than the sport's relationship with television.

Last year, the same belt fought for by Ali and "Smokin' Joe" Frazier was contested by Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov. What was once the single biggest sporting event in the world was only available to watch on the internet. Secondsout.com, a boxing portal, snapped up the rights to the live event from beneath the gaze of disinterested broadcast executives "because they couldn't find a buyer for it" says Trevor East, chief executive of Setanta Sports, the pay television network which screened British boxer Ricky Hatton's fight in Las Vegas against Floyd Mayweather last year.

"We're dipping our toe in the water," East told me at the time. "Boxing is not as buoyant as it was, there isn't the same strength in depth."

The big fight nights have become defined by their rarity value. Political correctness, a lack of genuine stars and the near disintegration of the boxing business have led to a decline in the sport's fortunes.

The main challenge for television is to make a return from the investment in rights. But big names are few and far between, said East. "It needs investment over a number of years, someone has to build these guys up. It's the toughest sport in the world, both in and out of the ring."

In the US, the greed of promoters, agents and venue owners has been matched by the incompetence of official governing bodies. There are now 17 different weight classes, spread across four different world governing bodies (WBC, WBO, IBF and WBA). Some of the weight classifications are separated by as few as seven pounds. This is a money-making scam. The greater the number of weights the more championship bouts and the greater the return for the promoters.

Don Turner, former trainer of Evander Holyfield, among many others, watched on as media space was taken up by nastier, uglier versions of the sport such as Ulitmate Fighting. "The only reason mixed martial arts has even gotten off the ground was because the buffoons in boxing have made a mockery out of the sport," said Turner.

It's remarkable then how things have changed in such a short period of time, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Boxing is showing signs of becoming popular again.

This summer Ricky Hatton will fill the City of Manchester Stadium for his return fight after being outboxed by Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas last year. Last month, Joe Calzaghe, voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2007, beat Bernard Hopkins, again in Vegas, a fight that rivalled the Mayweather-Oscar de la Hoya battle, which drew a record pay TV audience for HBO and which recalled bygone days in terms of the intensity of the media interest.

The change in the weather has prompted East's Setanta Sports to sign an exclusive broadcast deal with promoter Frank Warren's Sports Network to December 2010.

Having written boxing off as an anachronism a few months before, it seems that TV is switching on again. It may not get back to being what it was in Ali and Frazier's pomp, but the signs are that it's back up off the canvas.