Comments Thread For: Crawford-Molina Fight Peaked at 871K Viewers, Averaged 806K

[bigdunny1]

Showtime had the better fight on paper but it's simple why the ratings tanked and HBO killed them. Showtime used to get close to 1m viewers just a few years ago were neck and neck in ratings with HBO. Then the golden boy split and haymon taking his fighters to pbc crippled showtime. HBO can make house hold names and stars because you know where to find their fighters if you a HBO boxing fan you saw Crawford built over years fight after fight on HBO. The star power of Crawford *****s charlo and mares who nobody besides few die hard fans know and who both don't consistently fight on showtime. Mares for example last 2 fights were on ESPN and NBC. Showtime subscriber hasn't seen him fight since 2014. Showtime also has gone through long stretches where they didn't air fights because all their fighters were fighting on other pbc networks or because pbc ran into money issues and refused to air any fights for multiple months. That's not good for the boxing brand on showtime.

[O.K.! 2.0]

The problem with Showtime & PBC is there not building fighters up like HBO, Arum, etc. has been doing for decades! Look at the few super stars showtime had of the pass 15-20 years! They all come from HBO! PBC came into the game trying to monopolize boxing like the UFC is doing in MMA but that's almost impossible to do in boxing. I have no clue why Showtime's Espinoza stated Showtime was the leading boxing network when HBO has been the big brother forever. I believe Espinoza is excited about the first half of 2017 with Garcia/Thurman, Frampton/Cruz which is good but Haymon has over 200 fighters signed & they can only come up with 2-3 good fights per year? Here are the 10 most popular active fighters in the game right now; (no particular order) Canelo(hbo), GGG(hbo), Manny(hbo), Kovalev(hbo), Crawford(hbo), Ward(hbo), Thurman(showtime), Lomo(hbo), Klitschko(hbo), Brook(?))) Guys moving up: Joshua(Showtime), Wilder(Showtime), Khan(?), Spence(hbo), Frampton(Showtime), Garcia(Showtime), Bradley(hbo) R. Gonzalez(hbo).
HBO looks like they will be OK for the future. Espinoza needs to worry about Haymon bringing more fights to Showtime & making more competitive fights. Quick example, Garcia/Thurman is a much watch fight in my opinion but where's the build up? This fight has the potential to be a PPV fight but PBC has done a terrible job building these guys into stars. News flash, someone needs to tell Showtime's Espinoza to worry about his home turf before claiming to rule the lands!!

[ThatDude44]

They won the numbers game, cool, but Showtime definitely had the better matchups.