From Thomas Hauser's recent article on SecondsOut: "By way of example; the network poured a $3,000,000 license fee plus another seven figures for marketing and production into Joe Calzaghe versus Mikkel Kessler, which garnered a 2.8 rating (the lowest prime-time HBO World Championship Boxing rating ever). But that shouldn’t have surprised anyone. The live afternoon telecast of Calzaghe against Peter Manfredo earlier in the year came in at 1.4" I think Joe & Frank need to have their heads checked if they think they can dictate terms with Bernard, Roy or any other top flight American.
I don't believe this. Either it's out and out wrong or it is deceptively correct. Did HBO change the name of their program to "HBO World Championship Boxing" from something else in the last month?
That doesn't surprise me at all. Boxing is too big for it's britches now that there is no Tyson, Chavez, Leonard, etc. type guy. But we as fans are supposed to pay big bux to see guys who are obscure...when back in the day you could see a guy like Arguello or Pryor defend his title on freaken CBS. Boxing is on the slide, and unless prices drop and the sport becomes more available on cable........MMA is the fighting of the future, unfortunately.
:: We have to pay just as much for our MMA fix. $50 per UFC event. And nothing makes it to regular cable unless you like following that reality series crap.
Do you know how much boxing is available on cable? Apparently you don't count HBO as being cable (whatever) but even without Showtime and HBO there is plenty of boxing televised for all but the most fanatical. No, it's not live boxing, but since you spend all your time watching the "free" mma, you probably wouldn't know the boxing results anyway so it would be like watching it live.
MMA is the most expensive f*cking sport on earth. You can watch tennis, football, hockey, basketball, pro wrestling, etc on regular cable. But you need to pay $50 to see a live MMA event.:doh:::
Exactly. HBO alone has had something like 27 events so far this year. Add to that Showtime's monthly cards plus some extra ones (which would have been more if not for injury) and all their Shobox cards and boxing is well-represented on both networks. Add to that all the ESPN FNF/Contender, Versus, Telefutura, TV Azteca, FSN, and all the fights replayed on ESPN Classic (including some recent ppv's) and there's boxing on regularly. With the UFC (which basically 99% of MMA in the US) you get one or two cards a month, and at least one of them is going to be pay per view. At least with HBO and Showtime, they'll replay their pay per view main events the following week...and sometimes they'll wind up on ESPN Classic (like Ibragimov-Holyfield, Mayorga-Vargas). If you want to watch UFC events, you'll probably have to wait for UFC Unleashed to air them well after they've happened.
Very well said - to even try to downgrade a significant fight like this with something as profane as ratings shows me he has never laced them up. :warning:
Maybe the American fans are just "casual fans" and are not interested unless there is a yank involved.... I'm sure the ratings where off the charts in Europeland.
germans are worse - they didn't even show that fight... u got to be german, named Klitschko, de la Hoya or Mayweather...
Not a shocker. Nobody knows who they are and were seen a grand total of three times on HBO before this fight. I've never seen Hauser step through those ropes either, so he has no right using math to decipher some of these numbers.
You don't think they've had main events with guys on the network fewer times? I just don't believe Hauser's claim and it will take more than one source to convince me. It doesn't make sense.
With fighters from overseas? As far as I know, I can count on my hand how many times Calzaghe and Kessler have stepped foot on US soil, let alone done anything to warrant higher ratings here.
Maybe not with guys from overseas. Lehlo vs Pacq maybe? Fair enough to call Kessler an unknown, but Calz has been on US tv a lot in the past and while plenty of his performances don't knock socks off...there is no way to get the Lacy performance out of anyone's head. Throw in 39-0 vs 43-0...there just isn't any way this fight is at the very bottom of the HBO barrell. Then add that they've had to go up against better Showtime cards and even their own ppv's in the past. The message board wasn't overflowing with hype, but we've all seen far less interest in other matchups. This all adds up to Hauser being wrong or it's based on a technicality. If I'm wrong, so be it, but I don't expect to be.
