Interesting article over at the "scene", involving DiBella's idea of bringing Cotto back to HBO with a showcase fight in the fall and a matchup against Martinez in 2014. HBO rejected it, saying it didn't want to showcase Cotto after 2 loses. Well they not only accepted Delvin as an opponent for 3.2 million, but they got no contract for additional fights. Cotto can jump right back to Showtime for an Alverez fight if its proposed. HBO and TR are killing themselves. atsch
HBO has really put themselves in a bind by not working with GBP and relying so heavily on Top Rank. Top Rank doesn't have the depth that GBP has and they put on more showcase fights than GBP. Over the next couple months HBO has a number of main event fights that are pretty one-sided and most belong to Top Rank-Donaire-Darchinyan, Chavez-Vera, Golovkin-Stevens, and Cotto-Rodriguez(the best of this lot). By not buying from GBP they have removed most of the incentive for Top Rank to put on competitive matches. If they were to start working with GBP again it would force Top Rank to put on better fights.
Yeah, I read that article. It's pretty ridiculous. They acted like Al Haymon was the root of all their problems, now they are allowing Arum to put mismatches on the network for high liscensing fees.
Yeah if true, this deal is ridiculous. This also cuts completely against the idea that Hershman is suddenly willing to play fair with all promoters or any such nonsense. The beneficiaries of favorable treatment have changed, but there's still favorable treatment being doled out, and the fans are the ones who lose. I have no more desire to see networks overpay for Top Rank mismatches than I do for Haymon mismatches.
If you mean that they lose more money and are stuck with the ridiculous Mayweather contract,you are correct-they are number one at losing monies.
Im Irish and for the first time ever I watched an American ppv live on Saturday and Showtime is far superior to HBO,Malanaggi is a great commentator,Bernstein is ten times better than Kellerman,none of that looking into the camera hollywood type bull**** analogy before and after the fight that Merchant use to do..