Same S#!T, Different Saturday

No wonder boxing is dying in the United States. Last Saturday, many established names were in action. Kermit Cintron was on the comeback trail against perennial gatekeeper...


http://www.fightbeat.com/article_detail.php?AT=679

 

Good article! I like your style jaws...

 

:bears:

 

Whatever.
Boxing is dying because we saw Taylor Lacy instead of Cintron N'dou? Come on. Cintron vs N'dou is a nothing fight. Hello Telefutura level. You know what will happen when I get a copy of it? It will get entered and never watched. Cintron is a watchable fighter, but against a smaller old man, who should really care?
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Haye vs Barrett? I like Haye and I looked for this fight online, but Barrett is such crap that missing this fight wouldn't have mattered.
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And HBO shows non-ppv fights all of the time.
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That Kessler has slipped away from US tv...now that DOES bother mE.

 

boxing is awesome still..

 

The point is, coverage is getting trimmed down more and more. Its not enough to show one main event when there is strong potential the fight will suck.

I watched Barrett/Haye and it was 10x as exciting as the Taylor fight. People who are casual boxing fans missed the best fight of the weekend...and that hurts the sport

 

I don't think coverage is getting trimmed down. Well, it may be if nothing fills the wed night fights and telefutura void, but that hasn't happened, yet. As far as HBO and Showtime go, they probably show more now than they ever have, or at least comparable to the last few years. And the last few (or several) years have been a HUGE increase over the past.

Lacy vs Taylor wouldn't have sucked if Lacy could still throw a left hook. And in any case, it was still more competitive on paper and in reality than Haye/Barrett was ever going to be.

The Brits have always gotten behind their fighters better (more enthusiastically) than the Americans.

Boxing isn't dying. And HBO or Showtime will televise Haye again soon enough. Unless he fights another scrub like Barrett.

 

What I found most ironic about this weekend is that HBO long ago made the decision that Haye's next fight didn't warrant coverage on their network, but dammit if it every last exec wasn't huddled around a laptop at ringside, or asking for r-by-r updates once the fight began. Not to mention their hypocrisy in watching via pirated satellite feed, yet bitching when someone steals their own stuff.

But yeah, seems some are missing jaws' point. Boxing (particularly in the states) needs to figure out a way to get down with a flexible schedule, rather than networks trying to tell you what does and doesn't matter.

That said, Haye-Barrett and Cintron-N'Dou were both the same kind of bouts - the B-Side was of the been there, done that variety. How many times do we need to see Barrett and N'Dou lose a meaningful fight? So, HBO was consistent in that regard. No question that Taylor-Lacy didn't come anywhere close to living up to the billing (if anything, it was as predictable as most cynics suspected would be the case).

But... they're getting it right this weekend. Hatton-Malignaggi has the potential to be a stinker, so packaged with it is a seemingly can't miss co-feature in Kirkland-Vera, for however long it lasts. Not dissimilar to Pavlik-Lockett, when they included JuanMa-PDL. Few predicted a 1st round knockout, but at the very least a star was born in the co-feature. This weekend carries the same potential (not to mention the main event is far more competitive on paper than Pavlik-Lockett could ever be)

 

Thanks for the contribution Jaws.

Cupey

 

The Haye fight was shady. Haye dropped Barrett with a headbutt, and when Haye was dropped it was ruled a slip.

 

1. Hilarious
2. That would be mE.
3. This is why you can't trust HBO, Max, Teddy, and every other talking head who cuts on sanctioning bodies. It's because they want to tell you what matters. Again, it's because they want to tell you what matters.
4. Quick recovery from dying the weekend before.

 

I generally agree with jaws so this isn't personal.

You putting spoiler results in the thread headings...that's a different story. :warning:

 

I think a bigger problem that any trimming of their schedule on, in regards to HBO, is how limited the pool of fighters that get on the network has become.

There's very few new faces that are fighting on HBO these days.

It's primarily the same group of fighters, much of the time in fights they're expected to win.

Even the young fighters that have recently recieved air time (like Arreola, Gamboa, Berto, Angulo, Kirkland) are rarely put in fights they're not expected to win (easily).

And a lot of the match-ups on HBO are frankly manufactured (Hopkins-Wright, Jones-Trinidad, DLH-Forbes, Hopkins-Pavlik, Calzaghe-Jones - to me, at least, DLH-Pacquiao).

There's very few HBO/HBO PPV telecasts this year I've actually had any real anticipation for.

 

talk is a good thing.

I mean I agree the Cintron fight is somewhat of an afterthought, but Jake is right about my sentiments.

For me, more is better. Because then you don't have the entire population of boxing fans turning in for one fight, and maybe its good or maybe its not.

Having guys on air, even if its telefutura or wed night fights, builds interest. The public needs to see young fighters before they're thrown in against an established name. The "healing" many of us think needs to happen in boxing starts with grass roots bouts of people from all parts of the world.

In short, its coverage that needs to pick up. There are alot of solid fights this and other weekends, but we need to get away from just showing one fight out of a possible handful and not exposing the new faces.

Jeff Lacy is a nice guy, decent fighter. But he's never going to break through and be a solid world champion, he just doesn't have it. I think more highly of Taylor, but as you say why not show Kessler in the states or some of the other talent.

People know who Hatton and Malignaggi are, and thats good, but we need more on the broadcast, more exposure to people that we haven't heard of, rather than having people like us be the only ones who know whose fighting who and why it matters on a weekly basis.

 

Anytime sir

 

this is hitting my sentiments head on.l

 

::

I like it.

 

Bull to the shizz-o.

The Ring suggested the same thing seven years ago with their thinly veiled scheme to turn around declining subscriptions. The alphabets are ruining the sport, one champ per division heals all, blah blah blah...

Hatton-Malignaggi is for junior welterweight supremacy, even though no major alphabet title is at stake (though I'm sure Karl and others will fly in here saying the IBO belt is a legitimate title). Yet interest in this fight couldn't be any lower.

Joe Calzaghe is a magazine champ at light heavyweight, yet has no interest in taking on another top light heavyweight, at least not younger than 35. Nor does HBO have any interest in matching him against one - so much that they even edited out Max Kellerman's inquiry about Chad Dawson in airing last week's replay.

I'll always argue that a more feasible solution is simply ranking fighters 1-10, with the #1 spot always up for grabs - meaning that unlike a belt, you can't merely claim the spot and then sit on your lead. But so long as HBO is willing to overspend in order to keep their own fraternity of fighters protected from everyone else and simply fighting one another, we'll never again have that level of cooperation.

 

Jaws, you better hope that less is more, because HBO and Showtime boxing will be slashing their budgets in 09.

 

Given that Michael Buffer now announces The Ring title along with the other belts that are out there, it appears as though there are now 5 "recognized" championship belts per weight class...and that Golden Boy owns one of them.

Maybe boxing can eventually copy MMA (and wrestling before it) and have individual promoters make up their own belts and rankings.

 

its not us I'm concerned about. Less and less sports fans have any interest in boxing. Outside of this board, and ones like it, I'd bet 99% of people couldn't name champions in at least 8 divisions.

Point is, we need to make boxing more accesible and more covered. And that starts by showcasing our talent.

UFC sucks, personally, but it is run well. One belt, you get to see 75 fights per telecast, they have Spike TV shows and other things that people pick up on.

There is a pool of people who would watch boxing, but it doesn't get a fraction of the exposure MMA does....and its a problem comparably as well as just for boxing's own good.

 

I started to make that point about Oscar, but shied away from it. But yeah, he owns the damn mag, but is like any other salesman - touts The Ring belt at his convenience, yet still has his staff and HBO (though I guess one and the same) market him as a 10-time world champ in six weight classes.

It's funny that people keep claiming alphabet titles killed the sport, but why was this never a problem in terms of popularity in the 80's and 90's?

 

Thank you for proving my point, and shooting down your own argument in the process.

 

Yeah, I've noticed that the Golden Boy crowd now display The Ring prominently on some of their clothing.

I don't think the number of titles, by itself, is killing the sport. If the champions were regularly fighting other champions, it wouldn't be such a big deal.

The problem, at least part of it, is there are divisions where you have 4-5 fighters sitting on their indiividual slice of the pie.

 

How so ... you claim in one post that too many belts are the issue.

I reply that the same number of belts were around in the 80's and 90's, yet the sport was still thriving (though more so in the 80's than the 90's).

You reply that there were better fighters back then...

So how exactly are belts still the problem?

There were better fighters willing to make better fights, regardless of who held what belt.

Translation: the belts aren't the problem, or at least the only problem.

Give the sport one belt per division, and HBO STILL makes the matches they're making today.

THAT is the problem.