Arum on the future of PPV, HBO and Turner Sports

I think the star issue is a big problem. I love fighters like Ward, Kovalev, Crawford, Postol, but they aren't doing the character thing that sells fights. And, guys like Golovkin, Canelo, etc aren't taking risks right now. And, you have a character like Fury who imploded. Ortiz can't get good fights. We need larger than life boxers fighting each other again. The fighters that used to fight on the Mayweather undercards or were associated with Showtime at the time when Floyd was making showtime the premier network are blowing their chance big time, guys like Garcia and Thurman for example, these guys got a lot of exposure and they had a lot of hype behind them at the time, however once they made a bit of money they started becoming increasingly inactive and irrelevant, how many articles or interviews do we see these guys get mentioned in? we don't hear a damn thing about these kids for 4-6 months at a time sometimes, these were supposed to be the ones to carry the sport but I don't know what the hell happened. Then you got the HBO guys u mentioned like Ward, Kovalev, Crawford, GGG and Lomachenko, who are all superb fighters, however none of them has any kind of charisma or appeal to the casuals and HBO's way of promoting them sucks major balls! people want a bit of controversy, a bit of animation, I was watching the 24/7 episodes of Mayweather vs Hatton last night and I was like what the hell happened to promoting fights like this? You don't have to be a boxing fan to enjoy watching that sh1t, that was pure entertainment which is what the casuals are looking for, that school of promoting died and boxing has suffered since then. Only 1 fighter has to be controversial/ animated and all the fighters associated with him (fighting at or near his weight class) will get publicity too, like Pacquiao and Mayweather for instance.

With the absence of captivating/interesting/controversial characters in boxing, with boxers not willing to make any sacrifices to become stars, with networks, promotoers and manager not working with each others and with fighters fighting once or twice a year while being completely irrelevant to the casual fans inbetween their fights (which leads to them being forgotten about), the PPV business was bound to fail and to fail miserable especially with the rise of the UFC. Al Haymon's PBC model is imo the only way for boxing to survive at the moment, however if they keep handling business the way they've been handling business so far I don't see how they should expect an improvement in viewership due to the same reasons I mentioned above. I think the star issue is a big problem. I love fighters like Ward, Kovalev, Crawford, Postol, but they aren't doing the character thing that sells fights. And, guys like Golovkin, Canelo, etc aren't taking risks right now. And, you have a character like Fury who imploded. Ortiz can't get good fights. We need larger than life boxers fighting each other again.

With the absence of captivating/interesting/controversial characters in boxing, with boxers not willing to make any sacrifices to become stars, with networks, promotoers and manager not working with each others and with fighters fighting once or twice a year while being completely irrelevant to the casual fans inbetween their fights (which leads to them being forgotten about), the PPV business was bound to fail and to fail miserable especially with the rise of the UFC. Al Haymon's PBC model is imo the only way for boxing to survive at the moment, however if they keep handling business the way they've been handling business so far I don't see how they should expect an improvement in viewership due to the same reasons I mentioned above.