Larry Merchant was right

Well I hate to go all Vonnegut on you, but this kind of statement slays me (agree with the rest of your post though). There is no such thing as a boxing event, boxing channel, boxing PPV, boxing anything unless there is profit involved. So if no money is being made, the only fights being made are amateur fights or street fights or maybe domestic fights in bad marriages and such.

But as soon as you introduce money into something, you have something or someone with an agenda, which is usually to make more money. So they are going to tweak their product as they feel is necessary to create more money now and in the future.

My point : it's inevitable. This is the nature of human beings. You will always have commentators (who are PAID, remember) do things that seem like fighter hype, whether they are doing it intentionally or not. And certainly at times it is done intentionally.

So rather than rail against the HBO guys and wistfully pine about the "perfect" commentators (as so many here do in dedicated fashion) I would say that the colorful band of characters we get with HBO is actually great. Compared to what Showtime or FNF has had for many years, HBO has been far, far, better. If you go searching streams for PPV events and listen to all the different commentators for these big events, I can tell you with relative certainty that after you've spent time listening to all the TRULY TRULY awful fight audio out there, you will be thankful for the HBO feed, which is generally far superior.

You really want to hear Benny Ricardo? Or Lamps? There is just no comparison! (although Wayne McCullough at ringside was all right)

There simply will never be a crew ringside that pleases everybody, and in my years of watching boxing I have come to appreciate Lamps, Merchant, Emmanuel Steward, Roy Jones Jr, even Max Kellerman to some degree, since they are opinionated and try to be professional, but yet they have somewhat compelling flaws that make them unpredictable and fun to watch.

I think to a degree even the tension that some fighters have with the HBO crew makes things more interesting... Larry interviewing Floyd was must see TV, frankly. Would it have been any good if it was Al Bernstein? Probably not. And it's not like Floyd would have said anything interesting anyway, even in a longer interview. I think the commentators having their favorites in terms of styles/fighters actually adds a bit of personal drama to the broadcasts, and spices them up a bit. You just cannot take what they say too SERIOUSLY. If you spend your time remembering every stupid thing Kellerman or Lamps said about your "favorite" guy and get your underwear all twisted up over it, you are really missing the point. These guys are paid to do BOTH blow-by-blow AND color, and in the process be mildly controversial and entertaining. This means you will hear bold statements from time to time, but please put them in context. They are no more important or relevant than someone on this board posting that "PBF HaS no SKillz". It's just one man's opinion, take it for what it's worth.

I agree I could do without the OBVIOUS schill-jobs you see from time to time, that is sharply annoying, but on the whole I don't see a realistically better option than HBO.

 

"You heard him!"

What a clown.