HBO Crew Should Be Ashamed For Their Comments

[Squabbles94806]

Politics man....politics

[freedom213]

[QUOTE=joseph5620;4211036]

You make some points, but in the end Pavlik is an "HBO fighter." He can't just go over to Showtime and he is too big to fight on some indy pay-per-view or on ESPN.

During the fighter meetings, there was no "why did you guys take this fight" coming from Lampley or Merchant. I hear it was more of a "Hopkins is old and it will be huge if you become the first guy to knock him out."

My point is that Lampley and Merchant KNEW that Pavlik and his team were trying to fight guys like Green and Rubio and Williams and Wright. They knew their company, HBO, turned those fights down or was unwilling to put up enough money to make the Wright or Williams fights happen.

Taking their knowledge of that into account, it was WRONG for them to all of a sudden turn on Pavlik and put his reason for the Hopkins fight into question and call it greed for taking the fight when they knew that his team tried to get half a dozen middleweight contenders that were turned down. The network pushed for the fight because they thought Hopkins was old, Lampley and Merchant knew that as well.

If they really thought the fight was a farce, then they shouldn't have waited until the eight round, when Hopkins was well ahead, to begin taking shots at Pavlik and his team. They should have opened their mouths before people spent $50 bucks. They were selling this fight the entire way, and selling some more and when it appeared that Pavlik was not going to win, they turned on him.


I remember George Foreman stopped them from doing that during the final three rounds of Jones-Ruiz. Lampley started with how unskilled Ruiz was and how bad the match up was before Foreman interrupted and said, "Oh no you don't. Don't promote a fight and then tear it down in final rounds" Lampley didn't seem pleased that Foreman said that.

hindsight 20/ 20 right? MAke yourself look good at other's expense. If you don't know HBO's modus operandi by now this shold be a wake up call. These guys are leeches, they are part of boxing's problem in general and we as fans need to start calling them out on it at every opportunity. And HBO obvoiusly didnt like it when guest commentators shut them up when saying something ****** or biased. Roy Jones used to love to do it, that was great!

[ottoevans]

i didnt see the fight, i wasnt intrested in watching it. I thought Pavlik would easly win, but wouldnt mean anything since B-Hop was "over the hill"

[Sinisterevo]

I'm a white boy myself, but maybe Floyd was right - HBO doesn't like black people... and if dislike is too much of a strong word, then maybe they just would prefer Pavlik had won.

a white champion means more interest and more $$

[cortdawg25]

Very true article. It's not right to call Kelly greedy for taking the Hopkins fight. Mayweather is considered greedy for taking easy fights for the most money and Pavlik did the opposite. He took a hard fight, which was one of the few options he had. If anything he should be getting praise for fighting Hop instead of the disrespect they gave him.

Hopkins is great fighter and all but he 43. it's no way Pavlik should outowrked and outboxed by a 43 yr old. Joe atleast Hopkins clutching and looking like 43. I don't think Joe beat him either, but he didn't lose andget outboxed. This was supposedly a easy fight for Pavlik and he was being criticized for taking it. No credit if he wins and shame if he loses. and he should be shameful for letting a 43 yr old out box and outhustle him.

[oA2o]

HBO made the same mistake with Pavlik that they did with Taylor. If u look at the first fight between you have to ask yourself how many times you have seen a champion land 40+ unanswered punches and the fight not be stopped. In the rematch it was very obvious that Pavlik is not suited for super middle because he looked like a confused, bloated dummy whenever Taylor would take him off of his straight line. Hopkins knew to win he had to have a higher catch weight than Pavlik was used to. HBO's crew probably figured that Pavlik would destroy Hopkins and they could cater to their new cash cow. I think they all got what they deserved after the way they did Taylor last September seeing that he was their cash cow at the time. I just hope that Pavlik can bounce back.