Comments Thread For: Andrade's Promoters Delighted He Outdrew HBO's Main Event

[Pigeons]

The Andrade fight was the only fight I watched on the HBO telecast. We need more Americans on HBO. How many times do foreigners headline fight cards in the UK?

[GFunk23]

HBO needs less fights like Andrade-Fox fullstop

[Boxnation fan]

It's not that Andrade cant be entertaining, its that the opponent was too overmatched. One thing I agree with you about HBO, is why do they always do this? They tried to build up Andrade before, having him in super boring fights against B-level guys like Martirosan, or C-level guys like Brian Rose, and then Andrade bolted networks or whatever before ever delivering a top level fight. Now Andrade finally comes back to HBO, and is it to deliver a top level fight? No, it's right back to the same old C-level tuneups HBO was feeding him before.

HBO is one of the most powerful en****** in all of boxing. Why do the fighters always get favors from them? Why does HBO always have to put out the red carpet for them first, and then, maybe, they pay back HBO with top level fights? Like, 10% of the time. The other 90%, they never even do. Just look what happened after all the tuneups HBO gave Stevenson. Or look at how HBO gave Andre Ward so many tuneup fights, then even played the propaganda role in helping him rob Kovalev, only for Ward to bolt to retirement before ever giving HBO the fights they really wanted, like a long-term star-building campaign against the killers at 175 (first Stevenson, then Beterbiev, then Bivol, etc, and after that Ward would be a PPV star), or the GGG fight.

Given that HBO already gave Andrade multiple easy fights in the past, why wasn't their contract structured around getting a top level fight or three first? HBO should have said, "You can come back, but we already gave you tuneups in the past, so your first two fights on your new contract need to be against two of Jacobs, Charlo, Lemieux, and Saunders. Then after delivering the quality our subscribers expect in your first two fights, we will give you one tuneup, but keep in mind your style is not entertaining in mismatches, so after that one tuneup, we expect two more real ones. We already gave you multiple tuneups in the past, so even if four of your next five fights are against elite competition, that will still mean you got 3 or 4 tuneups out of the 7 or 8 fights we've given you total. That's still more than your boring style really deserves or makes sense financially, but we wanted to be nice."

Instead, they started him off with a tuneup again. it's like every single fighter HBO brings on, for some reason they give them five tuneups first, without even any guarantee of a real fight down the line. Sometimes they built to it, or sometimes the fighter just leaves before delivering. Mikey Garcia did the exact same ****. HBO set him up with a bunch of tuneups against smaller fighters, including an old Juan Manuel Lopez, and then right as they were finally supposed to deliver Mikey against prime Gamboa a year later than it was supposed to happen, Garcia left for Showtime.

It keeps happening over and over. Why does the biggest name in the game, HBO Boxing, basically the Lion of the boxing jungle, keep getting its neck stepped on by gazelles? At least with Mikey Garcia there were lots of people who wanted to sign him, so maybe HBO had to compete with them and bend over backwards to try to make Mikey Garcia happy, but Boo Boo Andrade? Showtime isn't getting in some bidding war to lure Andrade away from HBO. Showtime couldn't even find time to put Andrade on TV. So HBO literally has no competition for this boxer, and yet they are still letting him dictate, and giving him boring tuneup fights, which their subscribers hate, before he ever delivers them one single fight of quality.

What is HBO doing? I actually like what Peter Nelson has done overall because largely he has been turning down mismatches, and demanding better fights. He turned down Lomachenko vs TBA and would only accept Lomachenko-Walters. He did stuff like that a lot. But lately, first with all of the Andre Ward and Miguel Cotto mismatch bull****, basically Roc Nation nepotism bull**** is what it seems like, and now with Andrade, Nelson is starting to **** stuff up and no longer getting bang for his buck.

He also did the same **** with Chocolatito. The fights they bought at 112 were total boring mismatches as I recall, and then the fights at 115 turned out to be good fights cuz the opponents were so much bigger than Chocolatito, but were not against the top names in that division either. Why didn't HBO demand Estrada and then Inoue right away in order for Chocolatito to get on HBO? Why did they constantly settle for everything but the two fights fans wanted to see most, and now as a result neither HBO or the fans will ever get to see those fights in the context fans wanted to see them in, which was when Chocolatito was still at the top of his game?

Nelson did well early on, but there have been a string of major, major errors this year. Heck, even allowing the GGG-Canelo fight to marinate so long ruined that fight as well. So Nelson has made like five major errors this year.

But of course, maybe thats the point. Maybe he didnt want a good GGG-Canelo fight, maybe what he wanted was for Canelo to take minimal damage and win, so he can continue to make money off Canelo. And same for Chocolatito, maybe he didnt want to make Chocolatito-Inoue early on, or even Estrada, because he didnt want the Mexican, Estrada, to lose, or the much younger future star, Inoue, to lose. Just like they covered up the Ward-Kovalev corruption because they wanted Ward to come out the winner.

So if Nelson's goal isnt to make the best fights during fighter's primes, but if his goal is to actually control who wins the fights and even delay good fights until someone is old enough to get beaten, then that explains all of this, and boxing fans have a whole new problem. And unfortunately, it seems to me that this is exactly what Nelson is doing. Hes not trying to deliver the best fights to his subscribers, like he should be. Instead, he is trying to deliver the most PPV money to his bosses, and build PPV stars for his bosses, even if that means delaying fights until such a point when an inferior but more marketable fighter can win them. And that of course is killing boxing AND the PPV market long term, but they dont seem to realize or care about that, all they seem to care about is the immediate quick dollar.

Great Post.

HBO and their endless tune-ups or pointless fights.

Cotto fighting Kamagei was bad enough but now he gets to fight Sadam Ali too as his retirement fight...wtf is that about? two fights no one was interested in.

They kept putting Chocalito in pointless fights instead of making the Estrada rematch until one of those tune-ups beat him and then knocked him out in the rematch!

Ward shafted HBO, not only by retiring just when he finally delivered a break out performance but putting a dent in the guy they'd invested lots of shows to in Kovalev.

As for Andrade, why was he begging Charlo for a fight the other week when Charlo is a Showtime fighter. Andrade should be calling out jacobs as thats the fight that makes sense for both guys. As for Jacobs, why the hell is he getting a tune up fight too?

HBO Boxing Ratings are at a ALL TIME LOW due to endless bloody tune up fights that no one is interested in.

Every fight on HBO should mean something, at the moment we're getting nothing on regular HBO content.

[Kiowhatta]

Ok, so if he's that much of a draw, it would make sense to put him in with another name fighter - the likes of Charlo, Derevyachenko ( I hate typing that guys name, he needs a nickname BADLY), Murray, Murata, BJS, Lemieux, the usual suspects.

Fans would IMO pay big bucks to see these undefeated MW's actually clash with someone whose a 50/50.

I think even Jacobs is taking the soft route by fighting Arias- who is rated on average about #10 and no one has ever heard of him.

[Kiowhatta]

I agree and I'm really sick of it. It's so cynical of them to keep marketing these fights as headliners when they're far from it. Canelo v GGG was a headline fight. Come to think of it GGG has been in most if not all the major MW headline fights recently, while BJS fights nobody, Jacobs twiddles his thumbs, though Kudos does go to Lemieux for staying busy and putting it on the line against Saunders.
When are the rest of the 'stars' in the division going to take some risk and fight another name? A good loss is better than an easy win. Just look at the respect Jacobs got for fighting GGG. Same with Brook.

[rudy]

Exactly, his Promoters are totally dumb and HBO will look at this and see people switching off because he's a boring fighter and not rush to make him a headline guy in the future.

The sooner HBO get rid of Steve Nelson the better.

I watch Boxing to be entertained, not put to sleep and i'd be happy if guys like Lara and Andrade never appeared on television again.

Anybody to blame for this terrible fight it is HBO, why and i say why he not in put in with Daniel Jacobs, on HBO for his next fight, they are both signed to HBO for the next couple of fights

[Clegg]

They missed out. Main event wasn't high-level skills but it was entertaining. Corrales lost but wouldn't mind seeing him again, maybe he could face Tank as both are headed to 135.

The Andrade fight was the only fight I watched on the HBO telecast. We need more Americans on HBO. How many times do foreigners headline fight cards in the UK?

Aren't Ricans US citizens?

[Pigeons]

Aren't Ricans US citizens?

Were Indians living under British rule considered British?