Comments Thread For: Hearn Reveals Big Plans For U.S. Market, Being a Force on HBO

[Eff Pandas]

I think you're reading too much into this. Daniel Jacobs, if his goal to be kept active happens, will fight three times in 2018 (fights against Golovkin or Alvarez will cut shows that Hearn would be responsible for putting on). Add fights for "Big Baby", and you likely need one more fighter to round out the shows for 2018.

I'm just speculating. Like we all are doing.

But Joshua is THE GUY. None of this other stuff even adds up to Joshua potential-wise if things go right with him.

And if Showtime is only keeping Joshua now cuz they got a matching deal, which are usually not long agreements, & HBO made Showtime double there offer to match HBO's offer I don't think you need to be Einstien, Hawkings & Columbo combined to speculate that HBO will make a serious play for Joshua & with their likely bigger budget, there better boxing history + their more viewers + their more structurally sound, historical, PPV arm (despite Floyd making Showtime PPV the sh^t as of late) that has a nice chance to be a successful play.

Hell man I'm the guy saying HBO isn't long for this business, but its hard to ignore evidence thats coming up in real time to that suggest thats either not the case or at a minimum its not the case right now.

[Scipio2009]

I'm just speculating. Like we all are doing.

But Joshua is THE GUY. None of this other stuff even adds up to Joshua potential-wise if things go right with him.

And if Showtime is only keeping Joshua now cuz they got a matching deal, which are usually not long agreements, & HBO made Showtime double there offer to match HBO's offer I don't think you need to be Einstien, Hawkings & Columbo combined to speculate that HBO will make a serious play for Joshua & with their likely bigger budget, there better boxing history + their more viewers + their more structurally sound, historical, PPV arm (despite Floyd making Showtime PPV the sh^t as of late) that has a nice chance to be a successful play.

Hell man I'm the guy saying HBO isn't long for this business, but its hard to ignore evidence thats coming up in real time to that suggest thats either not the case or at a minimum its not the case right now.

Maybe it's just me, but the rumblings that Top Rank's move to ESPN opened up enough money in the HBO budget to take a flyer on getting Anthony Joshua is something that shouldn't be ignored, imo.

Daniel Jacobs is Hearn's first fighter for Matchroom Sport USA; he's got him the November HBO date, with plans to have him also fight in the Spring and Summer (Billy Joe Saunders or David Lemieux would seem viable for the Spring date). If he does actually get that active, you're basically looking at Jacobs fighting on most of the shows that Hearn was planning to put on anyway.

If HBO comes back to boxing with their money in hand, we may have an arms race here; I just don't think that that will be the case.

Alvarez will fight on PPV, Golovkin will hopefully fight on PPV (to save the boxing budget), and the rest of HBO's boxing budget will be spent on positioning Daniel Jacobs for PPV, having Kovalev fight out the end of his deal, the flyweights, possibly featuring Usyk if he wins the WBSS, and a few HBOLatino/BAD cards.

The exact budget is unclear, but the budget isn't want it use to be.

Compare that to Showtime/CBS, who are heavily committed to the sport. They're on track to feature 20 fight nights this year, almost all of which involve big names and big fights.

Anyway, we're all guessing at this point.