By Francisco Salazar
With the recent announcements of time-buys on ESPN2, along with boxing making its return to NBC and CBS, some wonder what is going to happen to the other networks.
Then again, some wonder what could about with the boxing industry as a whole.
These recent events could bring about some concern to a number of promoters and some network executives.
It does not seem to faze Peter Nelson, who is the Vice President of Programming for HBO Sports. A former sportswriter who has been with HBO for almost four years now, Nelson has been credited by some in the boxing industry for buying some of the best fights in 2014.
One of those fights was Terence Crawford’s exciting technical knockout win over Yuriorkis Gamboa in late June. Over four months later, the light heavyweight unification bout between Bernard Hopkins and Sergey Kovalev took place, with Kovalev winning a wide decision. What was significant of the fight was that it was the first fight in recent years involving a Golden Boy fighter (Hopkins) on HBO, whereas Golden Boy fighters fought almost exclusively on Showtime.
After a successful 2014, HBO kicked off the year by airing the Brandon Rios-Mike Alvarado fight on January 24.
“We were fortunate in that these fights came together with great partners,” Nelson told Boxingscene.com in a recent interview. “With Top Rank, we had a tremendous run of great events. Terrence Crawford in two great, thrilling fights in Omaha. Kathy Duva and Oscar De La Hoya for the Hopkins-Kovalev fight. We had the (Juan Manuel) Marquez-(Mike) Alvarado event with Top Rank.”
“We’ve had so many tremendous events over the course of (2014) and (we) feel really fortunate about the position of the fights for 2015 to be made.”
The lineup of fights HBO will air in 2015 has been the talk amongst writers and boxing fans on social media.
HBO kicked off the 2015 campaign by airing the HBO ‘Boxing After Dark’ telecast that featured Brandon Rios fighting Mike Alvarado in the rubber match of their epic trilogy. HBO will air Saturday’s ‘World Championship Boxing’ live telecast between Gennady Golovkin and Martin Murray.
With many more telecasts on HBO in the coming months, most notably the ‘World Championship Boxing’ telecast between Sergey Kovalev-Jean Pascal bout on March 14 from Montreal, Nelson believes the network is in good standing with boxing fans.
“In 2015, our brand is to continue to play the game that we play. We pursue fights of the highest caliber of competition because you cannot fool the fan. The fans want quality competition. The fighters want greatness. Greatness is more than talent. Greatness is about engaging yourself at the highest level of competition and the rewards for that exceed anything that you can pursue by trying to dress something up that isn’t the real thing, the authentic experience because the fans will decide ultimately what is legit and what is a great fight.”
“You can’t fool them (fans). It doesn’t appeal to a person’s ego or self-esteem. It appeals fundamentally to whether you think it’s good or bad. That’s what we try to set out to do and the fighters have risen to that occasion for us and we’re very fortunate be to be working with the people with whom we’re working.”
HBO added the ‘Boxing After Dark’ broadcast to their fight game in 1996 and have accommodated the Spanish-speaking fight fan by implementing the SAP format years later and adding HBO Latino years later.
Boxing does air on HBO Latino, along with HBO2, to appease the fight fans, much like Showtime has added ‘ShoBox: The New Generation’ in 2001 and preliminary fights on Showtime Extreme a couple of years ago.
While there could be opportunities for HBO to branch out, Nelson is committed to only airing fights on these same networks for the time being.
“We’ve had great success with the platforms of (HBO) Pay Per View, World Championship Boxing, Boxing After Dark. Now also we’re also starting to do shows on HBO Latino, more recently again on HBO2.”
“We’ve had a great diversification, different levels of fights, different steps that fighters can take in order to make it on to the network and then ascend as their careers progress. That’s beneficial across the board for us as we look to develop talent and showcase established talents of the highest quality and competition we can find for them.”
With Golovkin, Kovalev, and Crawford, along with others, having breakout years in 2014, there is hope other promising young fighters could breakthrough in 2015. With numerous platforms available, Nelson is eager to see how that plays out.
“We’ve been extremely fortunate that the fighters have all risen to the occasion and have wanted to engage in top-level competition at every turn and have had a willingness to pursue greatness. All we (HBO) do is sit back and try to give the platform on which they can then apply their craft for the fans.”
Francisco A. Salazar has written for Boxingscene.com since September of 2013 and has covered boxing in Southern California and abroad since 2000. Salazar also covers boxing for the Ventura County (CA) Star newspaper, RingTV, and Knockout Nation. He can be reached by email at santio89@yahoo.com or on Twitter at FSalazarBoxing
