By Keith Idec

Jim Lampley’s scathing soliloquy that closed the most recent episode of HBO’s “The Fight Game” amounted to a misleading temper tantrum.

Al Haymon has allowed too many predictable fights to air on free TV since the series launched in March 2015 with Keith Thurman’s dominant performance against Robert Guerrero. And such stars as Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia and Thurman – fighters fans enjoying watching – haven’t been active enough.

Having Haymon’s fighters compete on HBO, or on free TV against fighters tied to HBO, is an important component to providing more intriguing matchups, too.

Lampley lost his way, however, when, cloaked under the guise of objective journalism, he condescendingly admonished anyone watching for believing boxing can consistently reach a broader audience than the roughly one million to 1.4 million viewers who’ll watch fights live on his network on a good night. Thurman and Shawn Porter disproved that theory when their captivating CBS clash peaked at 3.94 million viewers June 25 from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

Networks eventually will pay for content, despite Lampley’s contention, if comparable bouts are offered to networks with regularity. Their salesmen shouldn’t have difficulty convincing at least a faction of deep-pocketed advertisers to hawk their products during boxing broadcasts if those telecasts lure 3-4 million viewers.

To make such ambitious goals profitable realities, the days of airing showcase fights in extremely valuable time slots must cease. 

Therein lies Haymon’s brand-defining challenge for 2017. If PBC is to survive and eventually thrive on network television, it is imperative that the organization start next year strong.

Much stronger, obviously, than it is finishing 2016. Lampley pointed to NBC canceling two of PBC’s prime-time December dates late last month, as well as three NBC Sports Network slots, as proof of PBC’s exaggerated demise.

The veteran broadcaster might not know, however, that PBC soon will release its broadcast schedule for at least part of 2017. It’ll include a smarter gameplan for using what’s left of the venture capital funds Haymon raised to launch PBC nearly two years ago.

Eventually, it’ll include a highly anticipated bout between Thurman and Garcia, assuming Garcia wins a tune-up fight against an undetermined opponent November 12 in his hometown of Philadelphia (Spike).

Meanwhile, some boxing journalists have indicated that PBC has squandered almost all of the supposed $500 million with which Haymon had to work when this endeavor began. It is irresponsible from a journalistic standpoint to speculate how much of those funds remain, particularly when one cannot even verify how much money Haymon had at his disposal when he embarked on this ambitious project.

To be fair, Haymon’s infamous refusal to speak to the media often makes matters worse for PBC. The highly skeptical among us understandably are mistrustful of those unwilling to answer even standard questions pertaining to one’s boxing business.

That’s no excuse, though, to spread erroneous information as fact because we’re denied access to someone who should want to either set the record straight or defend his position, depending on your perspective.

What we do know, no matter how hard Lampley attempts to convince us otherwise, is that bringing boxing back to free television is a worthwhile attempt. If it fails, and thus costs a multibillion-dollar hedge fund $500 million or so, why should that matter to boxing fans who want what’s best for this ever-shrinking niche sport?

The money isn’t coming out of our pockets, not even in small amounts on our cable or satellite bills.

You rarely hear fans or media complain about how Time Warner, the parent company of HBO Sports, has misused its billions of dollars of resources by marginalizing its boxing brand. Make no mistake, that’s what has happened in 2016.

That’s among the things that made Lampley lambasting PBC particularly appalling.

Between Vasyl Lomachenko fights against Rocky Martinez on June 11 and Nicholas Walters on November 26, HBO will have televised a grand total of four live fights over a 5½-month period.

Three of those bouts – Gennady Golovkin-Kell Brook, Yoshihiro Kamegai-Jesus Soto-Karass and Roman Gonzalez-Carlos Cuadras – aired on the same day (September 10) from separate sites (London and Inglewood, California). The first of those four fights was Andre Ward’s predictable domination of absurdly overmatched Alexander Brand on August 6 from Oakland, California.

The network will have broadcast 16 live fights through its pay-per-view division during that same stretch.   

Lampley should’ve realized even the non-math majors among us could’ve performed that simple addition when he hypocritically chastised Haymon for PBC’s thin fall schedule. HBO could finish this year strong if Golovkin-Daniel Jacobs is added to a late-fall schedule that already includes Lomachenko-Walters and Orlando Salido-Takashi Miura on December 17.

Even that would only be the byproduct of Canelo Alvarez’s thumb injury sparing us a showcase fight on the network December 10.

HBO’s longtime blow-by-blow announcer also didn’t take into account that Haymon learned from the mistake of matching his product in prime time against well-watched college football games last fall. That’s primarily why he hasn’t paid for such space this fall.

Hopefully, Haymon also learned that classical music, elaborate sets and sterilized ring entrances aren’t important to viewers. It’s boxing, not the ballet, thus if a fighter who spends eight weeks in training camp wants to walk to the ring to Tupac or 2 Chainz or Barry Manilow, who really cares?

Flooding the market with underpublicized fights on countless cable networks – often on Tuesday nights and Wednesday nights, mind you – probably isn’t the best use of those aforementioned funds, either.

But if you offer quality fights on a regular basis, hardcore boxing fans and a healthy number of potential converts will watch.

That principle applies to whoever wants to try to televise boxing on free TV. At the moment, Haymon happens to be the promoter, organizer or whatever you want to call him, with the financial wherewithal and ambition to try it.

Just don’t kid yourself into believing Bob Arum, Kathy Duva and, to a lesser extent, Oscar De La Hoya aren’t watching with interest as Haymon attempts to make this work. Though those promoters all are financially reliant on HBO’s assistance to varying degrees, they, too, want boxing to reach a broader audience.

Boxing’s glory days are gone, yet that’s indisputably better for business, no matter how they and Haymon have dealt with one another in the past.

Promoters typically protect their self-interests. The survival of their businesses depends upon operating that way to a large degree.

Deep down, of course, they fully realize that charging consumers $70, sometimes slightly less, every other month is not the smartest way to grow the boxing business. It might make them more money in the short term, but it’ll be better for everyone invested in this sport if it is available on free TV on at least some semblance of a regular basis.

You’ll probably never hear that during one of Jim Lampley’s disingenuous diatribes.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.