how successful has haymon and the pbc been so far.... be honest

[Dip_Slide]

I wouldn't give it 5 stars but I have to strongly disagree with anyone that claims that HBO were better last year, people always complained about the bad matchmaking but we got a lot of good fights last year on PBC, and imo more than what HBO offered, in 2015 we had Wilder vs Stiverne, Garcia vs Peterson, Khan vs Algieri, Broner vs Porter, Santa Cruz vs Mares, Thurman vs Guerrero, Jack vs Dirrell, Jack vs groves, Degale vs Dirrell, Beterbiev is making good progress, Spence is being moved along, and more, these were all intriguing matchups on paper and they were all for free, we also had a lot of good exciting fights every week or every other week.

HBO imo didn't offer better matchups this year, Kovalev vs Pascal, Cotto vs Canelo, Fury vs Klitschko, Bradley vs Rios, GGG vs Lemieux (15 to 1 fav), Mattysse vs Postol, Mattysse vs Provodnikov and that's about it, Crawford, Lomachenko and Walters all had a disappointing year imo, so I don't see why PBC is getting all that criticism when it offered more high level fights for free and with fair rational commentary compared to overpriced PPVs with biased opinionated BS politics-motivated commentary by HBO! Sure PBC is not perfect and they should step their game up a lot, but compared to HBO they're doing very well.

[Shogunofharlem1]

My feeling on it are a mixed bag. Sure it allows for more fights but it has exacerbated the fragmentation and caused more piss poor matchups than I would like to count. The promoter garbage almost makes me wish don king was popular again. Sure he was ****ing over fighters but the new establishments seem to be ****ing over fans.

[MDPopescu]

Some of the post here sound like 'party propaganda' under a Communist regime...

[Dr Rumack]

I wouldn't give it 5 stars but I have to strongly disagree with anyone that claims that HBO were better last year, people always complained about the bad matchmaking but we got a lot of good fights last year on PBC, and imo more than what HBO offered,

Even if that were true, Haymon supporters couldn't say enough about the massive stable Haymon had assembled and how he had pushed every other promoter to the fringes of the sport. If that's true, how come barely edging out HBO in matchmaking is the best thing you can say about PBC?

[BrometheusBob.]

I voted 3 stars but it was a tough call because Martin is a doodoo champion.

[MDPopescu]

Don't forget: Martin just won the IBF title at the HW, due to a ND.

[just the facts]

I'm a white male living 30 miles north of Seattle, if anyone gives a ****.

I went with 4 stars. As noted there is room for improvement, but I gave it 4 stars. I am first and foremost a boxing fan and more boxing on free TV is and will always be a good thing to me. I don't give 2 squirts of pizz about production value and garbage about that. Commercials? that's just the price of doing business. There have been some good matchups(and some not so good). PBC has some excellent prospects in their stable we get to watch and I particularly like watching fighters I would have never seen otherwise (Kameda, McDonald, etc)

PS, I couldn't pick Al Haymon out of a line up

[Eff Pandas]

I'm a fan of PBC, but its clearly still a work in progress.

I think the Toe2Toe & Spike shows have been the best representation of what PBC can be. The bigger shows just don't got the luster & feel of what I think they should have yet & I don't think thats about the fight, which I think are usually solid to great matchups, but the buildup, the promotion & the production involved with it.

At the end of the day I'm beyond ready for boxing to get its **** together & quit being a every man for themselves sport that has a circus feel to it, I want boxing to become like every major sport, above & below boxing, & create a unified, centralized league structure of elite boxers that is looking towards the future of the sport & not just looking at the next big payday or marinating some fight that should be happening now.

And right now PBC represents the best option of that becoming a reality in the next decade so I'm big on board with them for that reason & with hopes they can eventually become that for the sport. Regardless I think time & logic (enemies to boxing) will eventually led us to a more sensical setup in boxing like elite boxers all being under one umbrella universe instead of the numerous warlords looking out for themselves approach we got these days.

[BWC]

When my buddy who actually likes boxing, but isn't a hardcore fan, first saw PBC on T.V. It was when Wilder Fought on PBC.

He asked me why Wilder was fighting on some 3rd rate boxing program on tv with a bunch if bums, and not fighting on HBO.

This is when I realized the average fan cant tell the difference between ESPN Boxing and PBC. In his mind if it wasn't hbo or Showtime than it was low level boxing programming.

And I knew than & there, PBC Would be a failure.

Actually that tells me PBC has great potential. Most fans couldn't care less about the promoters, managers, all that crap. They want to see good fights. PBC puts on the most fights and put on most of the FOTY candidates this year.

PBC has a bright future. Compare PBC first year to UFC first year lol

[bigdunny1]

Depends on what you are asking. If you are talking about successful in a business standpoint the answer is blunt not very. The ratings have been bad that's just a fact not opinion. The flag ship channel and the most important fights for year 1 was NBC primetime which saw a decline in EVERY show they aired from the previous one. And ended the year with about half the amount of viewers as it started. And it was not just NBC, Spike, ESPN, ect all PBC networks saw a huge drop from the first round of shows on those networks to the ratings they got the second half of the year. If PBC were any normal TV Show or TV Programming based on the ratings and the trends they would of been canceled a long time ago. The ONLY reason PBC hasn't been canceled is because the networks are paid up front whether these shows bomb or not, it's a time buy meaning the PBC investors pay for it and are on the hook to lose millions networks only got involved because there is no risk for them. But if the ratings don't turn around it's only a matter of time before PBC burns through all their money or the investors cut their loses and shuts PBC down. The problem with the ratings is 2 fold if you had bad ratings but the product was cheap you can operate for a longer period of time but the fact that PBC is super expensive to produce with fighter purses that caused PBC investors to lose millions each card out and this already forced Haymon to scramble late last year and put big named fighters on ice for the rest of the year or ship them off to Showtime to have them pay the fighters rather then lose anymore millions on shows that fail on PBC. The reason the star power on PBC shows the last few months of last year were significantly lower then what PBC started last year is not by design but a direct result of failed PBC shows.

If you take the business aspect aside and just talk about the product and the brand of PBC. I think they have a problem there as well. Max Kellerman said it best when he was asked about PBC and why the ratings are so bad. And Max said there are many reasons but the biggest is the talent. You call this Premier Boxing Champions yet the "Premier" fighters don't appear on PBC. It's more a minor league of boxing. Whatever you want to use to classify the best fighters in the world (top 10 p4p rankings have ZERO PBC fighters, biggest names top draws in Boxing NONE are on PBC, the top rated fighter in each weight class NONE are on PBC). Haymon has the deepest stable of fighters but surprisingly none of the elite guys and biggest draws. That's a huge problem and Haymon refusing to work with rival promoters and networks that have the top fighters and biggest names means it's hard if not impossible for his fighters to elevate to that level. Max compared PBC to MLS. MLS can call their league "Major League Soccer" all they want but all the fans know the best soccer players are overseas in better leagues and not in MLS and it's why MLS is viewed as second tier or minor league soccer. If you ask casual fans a year later what they think about PBC you will get 2 answers they either don't know or care about about PBC. Or they think it's minor league version of Boxing.