Thank you for yet another great night of fights! HBO is stepping up it's game and giving us some much needed excitement so far this year. The fights over the past few weeks have been fantastic, and hopefully will carry on throughout the rest if the year to make it a great year for the sport. Last nights fights embodied everything that I look for in a fight. Competitive back and forth action between two fighters that are always willing to engage. The fights lasted close to the full duration so we can enjoy a good amount of action, yet both resulted in convincing stoppage victories. One of them even a dramatic come from behind KO. Just reminds me why I love the sport so much.
Yeah, gotta credit HBO last night. Lee-McEwan was a helluva fight, and Martinez put on one of the better virtuoso performances of the last few years. Still, I'm not mad I ordered the PPV. Cotto-Mayorga had some exciting moments, and Yuri Foreman got his ass kicked. So it was fun! Overall, last night was a great night of boxing! The only one who ruined it was that AMAZINGLY boring fuck Miguel Vasquez.
It was a very nice night of boxing, no doubt. I didn't see the Vazquez fight, how boring was he compared to the average Foreman performance or someone similar? I have to agree with Irish though, although Lee vs McEwan was fairly entertaining, it was a low talent affair between two European level fighters. I personally enjoyed Martinez doing the business on Ziruk far more.
I thought Sergei showed great application and effort, outside both his comfort zones of 154 and Europe, against a stellar champion. As for Lee and McCewan, I am not even sure if it was EBU level, more Commonwealth or British Title stuff.
The Lee/McCewan fight was obviously not the most technical affair. However, I did find it very entertaining.
I can see how people would. I just find it hard to accept a professional fighter, of Kronk lineage, getting hit so easy. Lee ended the fight in fine style, and showed power, but....uurgh.....he never saw a punch he didn't like to taste.
Andy Lee has been w/ Steward for years...sure he has improved but he still looks average, his stance,jab, everything still looks amateurish..
I'd say that Foreman's title winning effort over Santos was far more entertaining than watching Vasquez fight. Vasquez honestly makes Spadafora look exciting. Most boring Mexican fighter of all time bar none!
i couldve done without lee-mcEwan. it had action but i still wouldve preferred to watch two world class fighters on premium television.
I refuse to bravo HBO when the under-card fight was shit, and the main event is what they're supposed to do every time. I know as fans we've been used and abused, but that doesn't mean HBO deserves praise for doing what they're supposed to do everytime out with a fight like Martinez/Sergei. Bravo HBO because they didn't feed us the usual shit? Not a chance. First of all, the opening fight WAS shit. Second of all, the main event is the calibur of fight they should be showing without exception. Fuck you HBO. Fuck you and all you've done to boxing! As I see it, you've cost me 000's of dollars by hijacking the sport, and now heart-break on to because you've spoiled it. Here's hoping the lossof Pacquiao will mean a blue-collar effort from you guys and a return to the dust-covered mission you once had in the 80's. Greedy fuckers. Fuck you. ANd fuck you TV execs. All of you.
What HBO will tell you is that they gave you two SP vs SP fights and 2 classic KO's. For me, HBO is merely the tip of the rotten American iceberg.....reality TV, hype and flash have replaced the substance. I don't think HBO ever got over having people like Lou DiBella in their employ.
Don't confuse America with American Corporations. I don't hold Germany accountable for the problems with Audi's engines. Or Japan for the supposed safety issues with Toyotas. I think you're derailing the point by bringing up America, as if it's a U.S. agenda that boxing be withheld from the general public, wrapped up for premium channel buyers, and subsequently diluted as a viable sport.
HBO is trying to serve the market. The market is American, as HBO sees it. Once that market turns bad, HBO will turn bad trying to serve it. I am talking strictly about boxing here, and the market for boxing-products, including fights.
So your point is, HBOs bull-shit is simply a reaction to an American market that is a bunch of fast-food eating, beer-swilling, tail-gating fucking red-neck hicks? Dude, these are not the guys watching boxing, at least not regularly, in the U.S. Red-necks hate boxing. Hicks still talk about Gerry Cooney. And most of them, if they ever were fight-fans to begin with, simply cannot justify paying the price to follow it.
Nope. I never said that, not even close. For openers, HBO does force a lot of crap on the boxing public, dressed up, as has been alluded to in other threads, as "Super-Man" fights. However, the American public is also wired into this "reality" TV nonsense, and so HBO has this 24/7 stuff, which it could easily afford to dispense of and spend the time and money on identifying new talent and developing it into something special. Of course, 24/7 just so happens to fit the "Super-Man" product nicely, so HBO is happy to keep trotting it out. Just what innane nothings were uttered by a 39 year old divorcee ex-drugs cheat to his camp are of no fucking interest to me, but because Sugar Shane is an "elite fighter" and because his fight with Money May is a "Super Fight", it's compelling viewing. And the public feels its "need" for "Fly On The Wall Documentaries" has been served. :shit:
I think at the end of the day, if we as fight-fans intend on retaining our credibility as free-thinking inidividuals, we simply need to realize the reality that HBO and Showtime do not entertain us by way of sport, but rather in the category of a circus, Pro Wrestling or the Harlem Globe-trotters. A logical conclusion from this is that boxing, as a sport, is over. Done with. Thank you promoters. Thank you networks. Thank you managers. And you may be surprised to hear, but thank you too to boxers. Our only recourse is to see beyone super-fighters, and instead demand super-fights, and we will take these fuckers to task.
Well, that's misplaced for sure. Expectations should never be judged by their possibility. And to be clear, I'm in the forum. All I see is boxing. All I think is boxing. It doesn't mean Ihave no other life, as if my very happiness depends on pencil-dicked TV execs. Not a chance. Save your sympathy for someone who deserves it.
