Carl Froch

Nelson has always been the same, groomed to be a pundit from day one. He speaks well but his bias’ is awful. Bellew I’m not even going to go there.

Macklin I feel has been disappointing. He was such a credit to the sport and gave us brilliant nights, boxed some great names and was always a good watch and spoke his mind. With his business mind (though lets not get into that now!) I thought he’d make an excellent pundit. The problem is that he’s clearly relying on this sky money and completely afraid to upset the applecart. He never goes against the home fighter and doesn’t add anything of substance when providing analysis (“Is Kiko past it?” “Warrington looks in tip top shape”) etc, things that anyone who has ever watched boxing could add.

 

Macklin started promising enough but now he's just a cliche generator. That last fight when the fit-up was incoming you could sense the calculation in his voice as he adjusted from the reality that he and everyone watching could see occuring and the requirement from Matchroom and Sky Sports to commence Operation Lipstick on the Pig...

Carl at least enjoys his ability to voice an opinion counter to the narrative. For that alone I'm glad when I see him appearing on one of their shows.

 

Andy Lee should replace Macklin. Adam Booth should be on more than Coldwell. I'd also like to see Barry Jones on Sky more often.

 

Agree on Barry Jones, he is a good pundit

 

I think the problem lies with Sky and their patronising desire to manipulate the narrative and oversell their in house fighters.

Macklin is capable of calling a fight but instead he's giving them what they want. If Andy Lee or Barry Jones were put in the chair I think Adam Smith would ask the same of each of them.

Sky Sports Boxing is still stuck in the equivalent of Richard Keys and Andy Gray era Sky Football coverage. They think that they can turn a poor fight into a good one by their pre, during and post fight chat. When the Andy Gray tapes surfaced and those two left it forced a long needed rethink about how the sport was covered and these days the quality of analysis and commmentary is far better and with it the viewer experience.

The Boxing boys need to get on top of this themselves and rethink the way this is done. They need genuine distance between their in house boxers and the guys being paid to call the fights. Enough of the cheerleading!

 

I'm glad you think so.

Although Sky Sports Football has undergone a makeover in expansion of its coverage, which adds to the subscriber experience holistically, the punditry is absolutely dire. I would take Andy Gray any day of the week over the vast majority of the Sky pundits. However, as with any media entity, the personnel are not always selected on the quality of their contribution. Sky are not headed by diddies and they are master manipulators when it comes to marketing.

 

I don't give a **** what he has to say, or anybody else for that matter, he is who he is. The fact is he was a warrior, backed the talk, gained the straps. Did he talking in the ring, that's all that matters really.

 

Andy Lee commentated on a few fights and wasn't biased at all for the GGG Derevyachenko fight, and for Crolla's retirement fight he admitted that Crolla was lucky to get the decision but it's no big deal as he's retiring.

But I agree with you that whoever is on there will all eventually say the same thing. I think Lee said Callum Smith clearly beat John Ryder live on Sky.

 

I think Lee is a really decent pundit, I thought he was a brilliant boxer and it's transferred well ringside. For what it's worth I think Smith did beat Ryder, everyone got caught up in the moment but Smith deserved the nod if either of them did. The fact that it was that close should have told Smith that he was done at that weight if he was serious about pushing his career on in term of success in the ring but he, maybe rightly, cashed out and was a human punchbag for a life changing payday.

 

I imagine the reason they haven’t used Andy Lee more is that he’s not really part of the ‘Matchroom bubble’. Every other pundit they use regularly, other than Nelson who has been there forever has all been part of the Matchroom stable in recent years.

Combine that with the likes of Smith and Woolhouse who just seem delighted to be ‘part of the journey’ rather than as professional broadcasters and it becomes hard to see where Sky stops and Matchroom starts.

At least they don’t have Hearn as a designated pundit now like they did on some of those NXTGEN shows, that really was taking the ****.

 

To be fair to him, Gray was a good pundit over the years, the best for a good period of them. I do think he'd gone stale, was repeating himself and the level of analysis has improved, but it was Keys who really dragged things down. Still, I digress!

Lee is very good, but even so he's better when doing Radio Five with Mike Costello than when he's on Sky and suddenly seems to be toeing the party line.

Ah well, back to Carl!

 

Has Sky's level of analysis improved due to the quality of its pundits, or due to the quality of its direction and production?

I understand that Sky have pundits to fill various roles and to tick certain boxes, but I would take Andy Gray over any of its "senior" line-up, including the dreadful Martin Tyler!

 

Agreed. It also annoys me because boxing is a bit of a fringe sport and the pundits don't help to educate the mass market audience at big fights.

My personal opinion is when people fork out for the bigger fights that are aimed at a mass audience (ie a Joshua or Whyte fight for example) - Sky should be trying to educate the viewer and provide analysis.

The way the coverage with Bellew, Nelson etc works will not educate anyone. All it'll do is build up false expectations about MR fighters (who are usually in 1/10 fights anyway).

To an extent it works - Joshua built up lots of momentum in his early days this way in addition to looking the part and being carefully matched. It's an effective strategy for top level and highly marketable fighters like him. When that same treatment extends to the likes of Anthony Fowler or decent but limited fighters like Whyte or Chisora then it takes the ****.