Comments Thread For: What HBO Should Do Now – Part One

[xaviertooth]

good read, can't wait for more (part 2).

ross should be reading this.

and stop babying berto. HBO should swallow pride and work with arum. put him with at least cotto or margarito. let's test berto NOW. he can be a big star by defeating legit fighters from welterweight/super ww division.

[warp1432]

I feel like everytime a Hauser article comes out, I'm the guy on the other side of the State of the Union speech that no one ever listens to, but once again Hauser just is full of ****. He's a very good writer, no doubt, but his bias is ridiculous.

My main beef from this article: He's quoting Arum...from 2008. Not only is this ridiculous, but let's think about what Arum was giving HBO in 2008:




and in 2011 is giving us this:






Why is Arum the "moses." If Arum was the moses to lead HBO, he'd drive them into hell just like he did Versus. I like how Hauser never mentions that. He criticzes GBP's deal with HBO and then applauds Arum, but Arum gave Versus way ****tier fights then HBO ever did.

The first half of this article isn't a "How to improve HBO" article, but once again to slag on Ross Greenburg. Sure they have made some mistakes, but the first half of 2011 for HBO is miles and miles better than it has been. Bradley-Alexander was considered to be a disapointment by many, but I think they did a good job minus promosing the loser a return date. However, I am interested in Mythasse vs Alexander, so that's fair game to me.

He completely ignored the progress HBO has made this year.

[dvb]

why do we have non boxing people who dont know or give a **** about boxing controlling what fights do and do not happen!.

arrogant idiotic morons just being amateurs with no proffesionalism!.

it happens a lot i guess in business,the people at the top are amateurs,thier pretenders,they dont listen to people they should and listen and allow the people the shouldnt do crap things.they do their own thing and dont do whats needed to be done.

we need someone like if not dibella himself back in their at HBO.
hes honest and passionate guy who loves this sport,he is a fan.

to say ortiz berto ect are stars and whoring them,but not putting them in tough fights,thats f&cked up.

they should do what they used to do,put tough fights and match ups together,and the ones who swim are the stars who will come out naturally,and the ones who sink regroup or go down to espn ect.

trying to force a star is bad,they have failed so much of late doing that!

no more b/s with gbp,no more b/s with guys like berto getting away with murder fighting bums and on ppv!.

how stupid to ignore arum and his high earning highly popular roster of fighters!.

in a way good things will happen now,things will be more competitive for showtime and make HBO sort themselves out or fall to numero 2!.

its like when wcw got good and made wwf get better and sort themselves out.

[komandante]

HBO should drop GBP, MMA and UFC plus Al Haymon..

[paulf]

I may just be drunk, but this **** was ****ing BEAUTIFUL.

Arum is not saint (as the article noted), but he has been the only promoter with the money and openmindedness to really try to innovate in boxing the past few years. Lou is of course an excellent promoter, but he is of limited means compared to TR and GBP.

I agreed with every single word in the article. It feels good to know there are writers out there really fighting for the future of boxing.

[chav]

I've never been into politics and whenever they have been going on around me, i'm usually the worst at playing the game, but this writer Hausser pens a strong piece and sticks it at the guys in HBO's ivory towers without mixing his words!!

HBO is broken when it's paying a "star" like berto who cant even cover a fraction of his $900K guaranteed feed via live gate tickets or who hasnt sold a single ppv, yet is getting paid like a star....and then top rank manage to put on the karass V jones & Montiel V donaire for under $1M...it's crazy and heads should be rolling at HBO because it's simply bad business practise and anyone that is running a business so negligently should be accountable....

i look fwd to part 2

[Dave Rado]

good read and one can learn a lot from this article (if everything in it is true).

however, we must always take into consideration if hauser is working for someone else's pockets. we cannot believe everything we read just because it is well-written and "sounds" legit.

You're either ridiculously cynical or ridiculously ignorant. Hauser is one of the most respected, most frequently awarded, boxing journalists of all time. The Boxing Writers Association of America gave him the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. He's not some corrupt little skivvy writer who has to sell his soul to make a buck. A man with his reputation for excellence would have to be literally insane to put his reputation at risk by engaging in corrupt practices.

[Dave Rado]

If Arum had all the HBO dates we would have another Versus were most the fights we got were overpaid and horrible.

You're completely missing the point. Giving guaranteed dates to any promoter is stupid as hell.

having Arum as your go to source about what HBO does wrong and write is dumb as ****.

He used a lot of sources, Arum was only one of them, and in view of the number of big fights he promotes, not having him as one of the sources would be dumb as ****.

[Dave Rado]

At the same time having Khan-McCloskey makes this mind boggling ... Khan-McCloskey is garbage...

That's a terrible example. It's a tape-delayed fight, so they won't have to pay much for it; a lot of Irish-Americans will watch it because McCloskey is Irish and is the European champion; McCloskey is a Ring top 10 fighter; and Khan has just been involved in a fight of the year candidate and will almost certainly fight Bradley for all the marbles in July; and in the context of that build-up, it will garner a decent amount of interest. You can criticise a lot of HBO's recent decisions but to criticise that one is just silly.

[WESS]

So what's the other side of the story? We all heard Top Ranks version.