It’s almost impossible to build a big PPV level star right now. Back in the day a young exciting fighter like a Tank Davis or Ryen Garcia would get built up fighting on HBO cards before moving up to have their own PPV’s. People that weren’t hardcore fight fans would come across those fights flipping channels looking for something to watch on a random Saturday night.
Now unless your looking for fights on a DAZN or PBC card these guys just don’t have a viable platform to establish themselves early as fighters people may want to pay to see. Top Rank and ESPN haven’t been able to fill that void mostly because of a lack of exciting fights they can make.
Now fights that would have been undercards on Boxing After Dark shows are getting passed off as $60-70 PPV’s and doing low numbers. Why would casual fans pay for a fight when they have no way of seeing most of these guys beforehand?
Miss the days on the west coast in college and after where we could watch some good boxing on HBO or a properly built up PPV card and still have time to go out after.
The production quality of an HBO card was second to none. The audio, video and everything else just oozed quality.
Between Schreiber, Lampley and Merchant they could build the back story of a fighter so that you wanted to see their career progress.
I like Showtime boxing quite a bit but they never quite managed to capture that same production quality and story telling that HBO gave us with their boxing.
Most definitely. HBO was the standard and everyone since comes off as bush league.
"You don't realize what you have,till its gone".....
Definitely miss HBO boxing, especially Liev Schreiber narrating 24/7,**** was epic now looking back. Our beloved sport is now fractured beyond repair it seems, sad......
The production quality of an HBO card was second to none. The audio, video and everything else just oozed quality.
Between Schreiber, Lampley and Merchant they could build the back story of a fighter so that you wanted to see their career progress.
I like Showtime boxing quite a bit but they never quite managed to capture that same production quality and story telling that HBO gave us with their boxing.
It’s almost impossible to build a big PPV level star right now. Back in the day a young exciting fighter like a Tank Davis or Ryen Garcia would get built up fighting on HBO cards before moving up to have their own PPV’s. People that weren’t hardcore fight fans would come across those fights flipping channels looking for something to watch on a random Saturday night.
Now unless your looking for fights on a DAZN or PBC card these guys just don’t have a viable platform to establish themselves early as fighters people may want to pay to see. Top Rank and ESPN haven’t been able to fill that void mostly because of a lack of exciting fights they can make.
Now fights that would have been undercards on Boxing After Dark shows are getting passed off as $60-70 PPV’s and doing low numbers. Why would casual fans pay for a fight when they have no way of seeing most of these guys beforehand?
Miss the days on the west coast in college and after where we could watch some good boxing on HBO or a properly built up PPV card and still have time to go out after.
- - American boxing took a horrific hit after the Ks emasculated Americans such that the embarrassment over the lack of American manliness bled down to the lower divisions.
In short, HBO flagship division moved to Germany for years, so they ditched boxing that left the shabby promoters scrambling other video carriers and streaming.
How pathetic American boxing has become can be seen in the success of Youtuber Pauls who have no boxing background and been exposing MMA and Boxing in their boxing shows while making 99% more $$$ than the rest of global boxing and having fun doing it.
They blew their budget on Game of Thrones only for it to have the ****test ending ever.
They wanted GOT to continue. They would have kept them in their budget. The directors wanted to stop it to go work on another project, so they ended it prematurely.
Boxing on the otherhand, was getting out of hand with fighter’s asking price. Problem was that those boxers didn’t generate in revenue the salary they were asking for. Only a select few.
On top of that, TR had left to ESPN and Haymon took his stable to Fox/Showtime.
The decline of HBO was that horrible output deal with Golden boy but really Al Haymon. They tried to fix it but Haymon had all the American talent wrapped up. In the end they decided to put their money into HBO MAX instead of continuing the funding of triple G's endless string of turd opponents.
Boxing will never have something classy like HBO Boxing again. It just had a certain class and dignity to it. Everything from the fights, the build up shows, the narration, the documentaries oof. Just goes to show you, this sport will always self-destruct, it's its own worst enemy.
Definitely miss HBO boxing, especially Liev Schreiber narrating 24/7,shit was epic now looking back. Our beloved sport is now fractured beyond repair it seems, sad......
Yep and it's not looking good either. It is becoming a more Niche Sport and all the promoters are losing money. People will not discover these guys on an app. You need to be able to watch them on free tv. But the problem is free TV is going away. Nowadays everything is going to streaming and apps. But it's not easy to discover boxers that way
You just now realized this?
HBO was the major league, Showtime the minor league, and all the others were just double A ball.
Now you just have a bunch of separate leagues that don't play against each other unless it suits them. It's a disaster and is worse every day.
I loved HBO Boxing but towards the end of their reign they were playing the same silly games as now. The broadcast team would suck up to whoever the house fighter was.
They blew their budget on Game of Thrones only for it to have the ****test ending ever.
Season 8 was rushed and the ending didn’t deliver but Season’s 1-7 were excellent. I’m not usually a fan of the fantasy stuff but I really got into GOT.