Comments Thread For: Larry Merchant Reacts To HBO's Decision To Leave Boxing

[SkillspayBills]

Someone made a great analogy that HBO is like BlockBuster. They refused to adapt and evolve to changing times and eventually they paid for it.

[Ray Corso]

Not surprised at their move!
The product is a difficult one to promote these days, no stars.
Buy that I mean their are no stars who can speak english the ones that might be able to bridge the gap don't have the personality to bring the sport back to the main stream.
To many years with Wlad and Floyd at the lead and frankly they were terrible when it came to main stream coverage.
The biggest market is the USA, you can have Europe and Mexico at their best but without the USA the market is not complete!

Their are no Ali's, Leonard, Tyson who had plenty of negativity enrolled in their careers but were marketable in the USA.
Wlad had no personality in the ring and out of the ring. Floyd had the "hate & fandom" going for him but he never had any charisma
to speak of.
The current stars such as Canelo, Triple G have made no real effort to be able to handle their promo's in English and that hurts when it comes to a wider scope of appeal.
When you have trainers and managers taking the place of their fighters "lack" of charisma they fail miserably. None of them are Dundee or Emanuel.
Most boxing fans from by gone years that bought Closed Circuit and then ppv events that brought the event over the top were
fringe base fans. The fringe is bored with the lack of characters
the lack of activities from the champions and as far as HBO is concerned I'm sure their tired of the money spent on a bunch of prime of donna's!

Losing HBO hurts, any time money is with drawn and has a trickle effect down.
Regardless if you like HBO programming or not this is not good.

Ray

[Jab jab boom]

That bias bull**** of Merchant is part of the reason HBO lost stars and eventually died. If you ran HBO would you like seeing an old bias scumbag talking **** to the networks biggest star? Jim Gray is a class act and true professional, unlike that old bias bigot Merchant.

Jim gray is a class act??? Lmaooo hes been a douche on multiple occasions.

[CubanGuyNYC]

Had to happen someday. Nothing lasts forever. Not even the stars. Merchant had an amazing run. He summed it up well, for the network and himself.

[livershot73]

Solid analogy by Merchant

yep..he's usually spot-on....

[Fists_of_Fury]

Jim gray is a class act??? Lmaooo hes been a douche on multiple occasions.

Compared to Merchant he's a saint...

[livershot73]

Jim gray is a class act??? Lmaooo hes been a douche on multiple occasions.

They could BOTH be ^ssholes, and I loved every minute of it!....I read somewhere that they'll be showing SURFING (I can watch that sh^t on YouTube if I really felt the need to) and since I think golf is a "stupeeda fahking game" (Mr. Williams aka Furio Giunta, S3 E7), bye-bye HBO

[komandante]

Merchant was far better than Kellerman 'If I'm 50 I'll kick your ass'

[Eff Pandas]

Someone made a great analogy that HBO is like BlockBuster. They refused to adapt and evolve to changing times and eventually they paid for it.

Bad analogy cuz HBO Boxing isn't HBO. HBO is winning still. And now they'll have more money to compete with there real competitors like Netflix. Showtime Boxing & ESPN+ aren't reallllllly their competitors. They got bigger fish to fry.

[Tatabanya]

Once Canelo and Kovalev went, the curtain came down...