Comments Thread For: SHO's Espinoza on Hopkins: No Childish Ban Like HBO Did

[Hitman932]

HBO's decision at the time was based on a few factors. The biggest was GBP with Schaeffer tried to strong arm them with threats of taking all their business to showtime.

There were reasons leading up to it of course. HBO was rejecting or not offering enough Moola for fights (Haymon's Guys) that Sho would then accept, and HBO booked a fight date that conflicted with a Canelo card.

Then Schaefer began the threats, and HBO, who had previous experience with Arum trying the same thing a couple years earlier, so nope, we are done playing that game and shut the door.

Showtime took the opportunity and jumped on it. The whole game was to throw a lot of money around. Lots of it and try to drive HBO out of the boxing business. Promises and handshakes were made, everything was going good. The whole GBP mess took place and HBO appears to be talking friendly to Oscar. Espinoza is in a tough spot now. Showtime will dig out of it though, at least for a while with or without Espinoza. I cannot see them coughing up that much money long term. We have already seen many of Haymon's fighters suffer from inactivity and poor match ups.

It does not mean HBO is in a great place either. The sport is bleeding money as a whole now. It is expensive, with much greed, and not only with Haymon fighters. Bob Arum has his share of fighters wanting too much for too little. The sport is also losing fans. Both networks have seen ratings decline over the years. PPV's are also starting to feel the pinch. Too much hype, not enough substance. We are only now seeing the results of the downward spiral. Boxing Stateside is dying a slow death.

A lot of good points here. It's true HBO is not in a great place either but in hindsight it looks like they've played their cards well and they still have greater resources than SHO and a lot less liability in terms of the guarantees they work with on their featured fighters.

HBO was really taking a lot of heat towards the end of the original output deal with GBP and I don't think they had a whole lot of interest in reupping it at any point but they didn't just want to let Mayweather and CO. walk over to SHO without SHO paying a price for it.

They had the good sense to engage SHO in a bidding war for Floyd that left SHO with a 32 million dollar bill and 6 fights with only one compelling opponent (Canelo) who could be counted on to do better than 1.5m buys.

HBO made the smart play because they essentially forced SHO to pay Floyd 10-15 million more than HBO had been paying him and he had delivered HBO much better results than Showtime could reasonably expect to recoup.

Right now it's all about grabbing control of Canelo. If HBO can pull that off they are in great position as so many big fights run through him. First it would be Cotto but ultimately the big one with JCC Jr. would make everyone a lot of money.

As it relates to this story Espinoza is just being his typical ****head self. He's in denial and I don't blame him. When he landed Mayweather and was backdooring oscar w/ Schaeffer and Haymon everything was golden. It's all gone bad so fast.

Espinoza can't ban Hopkins from their airwaves because they need to save face for not being able to make Stevenson-Hopkins after paying Stevenson ****** money for a throwaway fight. They need BHop to win and then come back over to SHO and give them the Stevenson fight. You notice he doesn't want to talk about dealing with Kovalev if he were to win.

[Mr. Philadel]

Stephen Espinoza, head of Showtime Sports, is not taking Bernard Hopkins' decision personally. Espinoza's network was trying to finalize a light heavyweight unification between Hopkins and Adonis Stevenson for a date in October or November - but then Hopkins unexpectedly walked across the street to rival network HBO and finalized a unification against Sergey Kovalev for November.

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That's wassup

[TheThirdEye]

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Dan Rafael few examples of poor journalism.

[Ham Porter]

I'm not sure who I dislike more, Espinoza or Haymon...

Both are scum.

Perfect scenario is these two f*ggots ending up at the bottom of a motorway pile-up.