One of good, old Bobby Lee’s favorite sayings was always “professional boxing in Hawaii died a long time ago, they just forgot to bury it.”

Bobby Lee was the conscience of Hawaii boxing forever until he died in 2020. There hasn’t been a professional boxing event in the islands since, but that is no shocker.

The sport is in a great place worldwide with Turki Al-Sheikh filling Riyadh Season with cards that would make Don King jealous, and doing it every month.

There is something for everyone. Us purists can enjoy all-time matchups like Oleksandr Usyk unifying the heavyweight titles against Tyson Fury and casual fans enjoy jokesters like Ryan Garcia or Nico Ali-Walsh riding the wave. The man who helped create that wave, Jake Paul, isn’t even a boxer. But line him up against Mike Tyson on Netflix with Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano on the undercard and they might break every viewership record.

Sadly, as hot as the sport is right now it has left Hawaii behind and the “let’s scrap” state will never join the party. Our amateur boxing scene is legit with this month’s Radford Rumble and clubs and gyms all over the state that I suppose lets the Hawaii State Boxing Commission still claim relevance even though its last meeting was in March and hasn’t had the minutes of a meeting posted since 2022.

Ever since Brian Viloria beat Julio Cesar Miranda by unanimous decision more than a decade ago in front of a wee crowd of 2,500 at the Blaisdell, there have been two pro cards in Hawaii. Two. And those were at the Convention Center and a smaller card at the Filcom Center in Waipahu. Hawaii has two pro prospects in Waianae’s Asa Stevens and Dalis Kaleiopu, but Oscar De La Hoya gave them a golden ticket as card fillers in California. Given that their promoter has them fighting once or twice a year in their important development stages, they are a long, long way from ever being big players.

So let’s make it official and bury the pro game here.

I dove into boxrec.com to learn about how great professional boxing was in Sad Sam Ichinose’s day, stopping in 1969 only because that was the year I was born and typing in 25 cards a year going back to 1929 (When the sport was legalized) was too tall a task.

I didn’t get to read about Bobo Olson, who was 38-2 in Hawaii, but there was no shortage of excellent boxers to come through the islands. Four International Boxing Hall of Famers, Ann Wolfe, Larry Holmes, Bobby Chacon and Tommy Hearns, fought here and Manny Pacquiao famously took it to old veteran Jesus Salud in an exhibition at the Convention Center in 2002.

Salud didn’t take that contest seriously, of course. He is the undisputed king of boxing in Hawaii in my lifetime, going 35-1 on his home soil with his lone loss coming to Fernando Velardez after 34 straight victories. He is followed on the list by Andy Ganigan (32-2 in Hawaii), Ralph Aviles (26-3), Ben Villaflor (24-1), Young Kennedy (23-7), Mark Ibanez (20-3) and Modesto Boy Dayaganon (20-6) as the only fighters to earn 20 wins in Hawaii since 1969.

You would have to be at the head of the kupuna table at Ala Wai Golf Course to remember Cesar Zuleta, a product of the Philippines who fought here 32 times and lost 19 of them. He was knocked out 11 times, including by Salud in the future champ’s pro debut.

The most memorable fighters are the ones who saw promising careers impacted when the pro game dried up. Ricky Hesia was unbeaten here in 14 fights. Eichi Jumawan was 7-0. Augusto Tulba — Are there three more terrifying arenas than pro boxing, standup comedy and politics? — was unbeaten in five fights. Michael “Wildman” Carrere was 15-1.

Hesia sought his fortune elsewhere, but the other three stayed home and pretty much watched boxing die.

Some blamed the emergence of mixed martial arts and rock stars like Niko Vitale, Robbie Lawler and Mayhem Miller, but that wasn’t it since MMA seems to have suffered the same fate with the exception of a rare Bellator event.

Feel free to fire up your favorite streaming service, they all seem to cover boxing. But if you want to see the sweet science in person, it will cost you a plane ticket.