By Jake Donovan

When the January 28 HBO Boxing After Dark doubleheader was first announced, its matchups were met with mixed reviews. Francisco Vargas was due to make the second defense of his super featherweight title versus Miguel Berchelt, while the man whom he defeated to win said belt – Takashi Miura – would open the show versus veteran trialhorse Miguel ‘Micky’ Roman.

By design, the show came with the suggestion of pairing Vargas and Miura – had they both won – in a rematch to their 2015 Fight of the Year, which took place on the HBO Pay-Per-View undercard of Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez’ World middleweight championship winning effort over Miguel Cotto in Nov. ’15. Miura held up his end, outlasting Roman to take a 12th round knockout in an early frontrunner for 2017 Fight of the Year where both boxers were making their respective debuts on HBO’s flagship network.

Vargas wasn’t quite as fortunate as his face was run through the meat grinder in an 11th round knockout loss to Berchelt, also appearing on HBO for the first time in becoming a newly minted super featherweight titlist in a breakout performance.

It was a risk taken by the network in proceeding with a show where three of the four combatants had never before appeared live on its airwaves. In the end, however, HBO now has – if it wants – a leg up on the soon-to-be-ordered title fight between Berchelt and Miura, both of whom left a lasting impression on viewers.

Every once in a while, it’s wise to stay silent and just listen to the smartest guy in the room.

On this occasion, that man would be Peter Nelson, the former gifted writer whom since Dec. ’15 has assumed the role of HBO Executive Vice President. It has been a challenge for Nelson and his team, as they’ve had to contend with a declining budget and now wade through AT&T’s pending $109 billion acquisition of HBO’s parent company Time Warner.

The year that wasn’t in 2016 was a rough one for stateside boxing fans as a whole, HBO in particular as neither the matchups nor the ratings left much room for congratulations. Still, the network had 29 of the Top 30 performing premium cable boxing telecasts on the year, strongly lending the suggestion of remaining the go-to place for a night at the fights.

Not helping was the fact that it’s last live night of boxing came on December 17, going six weeks before reintroducing its brand to viewers on January 28. It will be another six weeks before subscribers won’t have to come out of pocket to take in a live broadcast, when David Lemieux takes on Curtis Stevens in the headlining act of its March 11 doubleheader.

Adding gasoline to the fire is the following:

- Originally wedged in between was the first of three already scheduled PPV telecasts (with potentially five in total once all shakes out), as Miguel Cotto and James Kirkland – neither of whom have fought since suffering separate losses to Alvarez in 2015 –  were on pace to collide in the main event live from the greater Dallas area. The fight was officially caneled on Thursday when Kirkland suffered an injury;

- Its first entry in 2017 suffered a rare ratings loss to American premium cable rival Showtime, which also featured a terrific doubleheader of its own on January 28

The good news is that when the glass is half-empty, it’s also half-full.

Cotto-Kirkland (February 25) was going to be the only PPV telecast of the lot that absolutely wouldn’t have trailed a live broadcast on HBO the week prior. The HBO brass – while politely declining comment in confirming its future plans – is in fact hard at work to shape up its second quarter. Notes were taken as to what the direct competition has to offer, along with the type of programming against which not to go head-to-head (Super Bowl weekend, NCAA March Madness).

With that came the decision to push hard for the March 11 Boxing After Dark event. It will come immediately after the last of Showtime’s announced 1st quarter events will have aired, and – much like the January 28 telecast – will feature what is believed to be an all-action middleweight slugfest for however long it lasts.

The co-feature slot is manned by former featherweight titlist Yuriorkis Gamboa, who has also won interim titles in two other weight classes and now whom plans to compete in what has become a red-hot super featherweight division – one in which HBO has become very interested, with ties to Vargas, Vasyl Lomachenko and possibly the forthcoming Miura-Berchelt clash should it land in The Americas or a market favorable to its programming needs.

What will also come of the March 11 telecast is the opportunity to remind viewers one last time of its March 18 PPV event headlined by unbeaten, unified middleweight titlist and network star Gennady Golovkin in a mandatory title defense versus Brooklyn’s Daniel Jacobs. T

The show will air live from Madison Square Garden in New York City, and already features in separate bouts past rivals Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez and Carlos Cuadras, the pair of super flyweight stars who made for one of the very best fights of 2016. Gonzalez prevailed by unanimous decision to win a title in a fourth weight class, surpassing his boxing hero – the late Hall of Fame legend Alexis Arguello – in becoming the first-ever boxer from Nicaragua to do so.

Should the galaxy stars properly align and both win their respective undercard bouts, a rematch is in store and will likely find its way to an HBO-branded event later in the year. As the network has become invested in the super featherweight division, there is newfound interest in the super flyweight division.

It has for decades served as an untapped market for American cable networks, but one that features the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer in Gonzalez and another on his trail in Japan’s Naoya Inoue. HBO has made a point to drop Inoue’s name on air, with hope of bringing the two-division champ and prodigious talent to the U.S. and its network in the coming months.

More of a sure thing is the strong likelihood of a second-half schedule that features a slew of top-shelf talent in action. Included among the lot are a trio of fighters who enjoyed a big year in 2016, two of which were in top consideration for Fighter of the Year.

Vasyl Lomachenko is due to return in mid-April, although the plan is to have a confirmed opponent before making a date available. The hope was to pair the Ukrainian wunderkind with Panama’s Jezreel Corrales in a super featherweight title unification clash. However, Corrales’ team decided it was in the best interest of the streaking boxer to look elsewhere, leaving Lomachenko’s team to search for another dance partner – wishful thinking pointing toward a rematch with the only pro boxer to date to hand him a loss in battle-tested Orlando Salido.

Also in the works are plans for Terence Crawford to make his first appearance of 2017 in the springtime. The unbeaten switch-hitter became a two-division World champion in 2016, doing so the hard way in taking on then-unbeaten Viktor Postol in a battle of the two best super lightweights in the world. Crawford not only won their July ’16 PPV headliner, but made it look effortless against an awkward style in confirming his place as one of the very best in the sport.

The bout was one of three on the year, although his other two performances were far more showcase than intended tests as he manhandled the likes of Hank Lundy and John Molina Jr. As with Lomachenko, HBO has every intention of presenting the best possible fight featuring Crawford before confirming a fight date.

Viewers can also expect to see the return of Oleksandr Usyk, the 2012 Olympic Gold medalist and now top rated cruiserweight. The uber-talented boxer from Ukraine made his HBO debut last December, scoring a 9th round knockout of crafty southpaw Thabiso Mchunu. The bout landed on the undercard of the final fight of Bernard Hopkins’ career, albeit a knockout loss to Joe Smith Jr. atop a telecast that peaked at more than 1 million viewers.

The intention is for Lomachenko, Crawford and Usyk to all appear on HBO’s flagship station during the spring, a season that will also include what figures to be the most watched PPV event of the post-Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao era.

Alvarez and countryman Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will clash at a location to determined (likely the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas) on May 6, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo and in a bout that has been discussed for nearly six years. The matchup will take place at a catchweight, but carrying middleweight implications as Alvarez remains the division’s lineal champion and his name mentioned anytime the discussion turns to Golovkin, whose PPV headliner versus Jacobs comes seven weeks prior.

Boxing fans have every right to scoff at the suggestion that with wins by each, Alvarez and Golovkin will turn to each other for a long-awaited showdown this fall. Yet that is exactly the intention by both boxers and their respective camps, also coming with a strong push from HBO, who remains committed to greatly improve on the year that wasn’t for all stateside boxing fans and networks in 2016 and provide the sport with a much brighter future.

The fact that the network has already sought out opportunities to fill the gaps – along with its long-standing position as the industry leader – is reason enough for much-needed optimism.

Twitter: @JakeNDaBox