Is the Golden Boy-HBO split the best thing that could have happened for us fans?

[Thornton Melon]

HBO was tired of being handcuffed by Haymon and having Berto and Hernandez and Broner-Rees and even back further when B-hop and Roy Jones were fighting nobodies. Now we have serious competition b/w HBO and Showtime and GB and TR. Now instead of protecting guys they are forcing them to fight when in the past it wasn't always like that. But now neither one of them want to be outdone by the other. I think that is why they come out with tv ratings now after every fight. They used to not do that. I also truly believe that if things would have stayed the same then we wouldn't have fights like Kolavev-Cleverly. And also Golden Boy matching all of their 140 pound guys together.

Anybody else feel the same?

[thuggery]

It's going to be literally impossible to see unification and no.1 fight no.2 guys in a lot of cases.

But they are upping the quality of the fights I guess you could say

[Hougigo]

This is just another road block in making fights.... although the competition between the two could be good.
Now not only do we have to worry about them being GBP or TR, but HBO or Showtime as well

[Sugar Adam Ali]

This reminds me alot of the wrestling wars of the late 90's between wwf and wcw....

The competition made both companies work harder and put on alot of great events like nwo and goldberg and rock, dx, stonecold, etc...

Same is happening to boxing right now... Showtime has given their network to GBP and its up to GBP to produce huge ratings... This has forced HBO to buddy up with Top Rank and some other promoters and really trying to get the swagger back after they lost floyd, canelo, broner, khan, lucas, danny, mares, hopkins

And with donaire losing to rigo, manny getting iced and being in the twilight of his career, jmm and serg nearing the end, Chavez Jr being unprofessional, Bradley and rigo failing to garner huge fan bases,, ward always being injured, pavlik retiring
This has forced HBO to carry fights they wouldnt have 10-15 years ago...

Guys like GGG, cleverly, kolovc, stevenson, froch-kessler, Geale-barker, etc are now getting a chance to show the world on hbo how good they are....

Grant it the best thing that could happen to boxing would be one unified sanctioning body like NBA, NFL, UFC to make the fights we all want to see...
Thats not going to happen anytime soon....

But i do like where the sport is heading with this HBO vs SHowtime war...

p.s..
Thuggery said that unifications will be harder to make, and grant it he is correct but its not like we were seeing any before this all started.. So i dont think its that big of a deal.
we didnt see khan-bradley, manny-floyd, mares-donaire, hell GBP cant even make the lucas-danny fight....

[StarPower]

Haymon handcuffing HBO is a little bit of an over statement. He doesnt have a huge stable of fighters to accomplish that. I thought he was doing his job building up Berto the right way. Haymon did give us Berto vs Guerrero and Ortiz on HBO. He also did match up Berto vs Mosley after Mosley beat Margarito, although that fight didnt happen.

[FeFist]

This reminds me alot of the wrestling wars of the late 90's between wwf and wcw....

The competition made both companies work harder and put on alot of great events like nwo and goldberg and rock, dx, stonecold, etc...

Competition really does make people go out, as they have to go all out to please their core audience. When the competition doesn't exist, they know they have to nothing for their core audience and focus primarily on the casuals so you get more smoke and mirrors.

[Build That Wall]

It is the worst thing that could happen. The networks now control boxing.

[HeroBando]

It is the worst thing that could happen. The networks now control boxing.

It's always been like that, duh. Who do you think built up GBP?

[JoeKidd]

You're not getting the most competitive fights. You're getting the most popular fights. It's not necessarily network competition that is driving this. It's business! Viewership! GGG against any star would be highly competitive. But would that sell? Not right now! Same for Matthysse.

[-PBP-]

It's temporary. There will come a time where another Mayweather/Pacquiao situation arises.