Arum Aims To Bring Fights To Showtime, Requests Meeting
By Steve Kim
In addition to HBO not distributing the November 5th pay-per-view event featuring Manny Pacquiao against Jessie Vargas, according to Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum, he may be going across the street to Showtime to see if he can get dates for his other high profile clients.
He detailed many of his thoughts to Mitch Abramson of Ring Magazine. The bottom line is very simple - HBO simply may not have the budget to showcase his clients like Vasyl Lomachenko and Tim Bradley.
Arum told BoxingScene.com- "Again, you have to understand, we've had a great relationship with HBO. We found them to be great partners and great people but there comes a time when they run out of boxing or out of money, what choice do you have? In other words, if they can't afford my fighters and other people's fighters then you have to look for other outlets.
"I mean, money is money and their corporate policies are corporate policies but I'm dealing with athletes and he nature of being athletes they have limited careers."
So in Arum's opinion is HBO phasing out it's boxing programming?
"I have no idea," he admitted. "If I told you otherwise I'd just be guessing. I absolutely have no idea."
When Stephen Espinoza, the head of Showtime Sports was asked about Arum's comments about conferring with his network, he told BoxingScene.com:
"He's asked for a meeting and I'm sure we can make that happen. I'm not sure exactly what's on the agenda so that remains to be seen. Nothing specific has been said but we're willing to meet with him just like anybody else."
The question is does Showtime have the financial resources and available dates to accommodate Top Rank for the final months of 2016? Espinoza had made it clear in the past that they their fall schedule would be relatively sparse in the fall months.
"The plan was to always be very light - if not completely dark in October and November - mainly for programming reasons. So that doesn't leave much room. You've got three viable weekends in December and you have events rumored for at least two of them. So dates in the fall are at a premium once you get to the end of the year and you start factoring in holidays and stuff."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com
