Very Feel > Big Drama Show

I think by now we can safely call Usyk the better p4p fighter with a legacy yet unfinished but already coalesced as greater, and more charismatic & telegenic than Golovkin. So then, if HBO Boxing hadn't bitten the dust almost three years ago now, and they had snapped up The Cat (which of course would have been a no-brainer, given how a) GGG had recently trailblazed and given other European fighters entrée into the American television market and with it the opportunity at true worldwide stardom and b) the fact that his then more well known countryman Vasyl Lomachenko had featured on the network extensively until just the year prior, in a nine bout stretch from Salido through Sosa that still comprises more than half of his pro career to date, and including splitting a bill with Usyk, who featured twice on HBO programming in all, both fan-friendly master classes, versus Mchunu & Hunter - just think about how aggressively they would have promoted him? They would have strapped the damn proverbial rocket to his back. His popularity among casual fans and potential for mainstream crossover stardom in the USA would have dwarfed Golovkin's...and that's despite being the far likelier man on any given night to nab a UD rather than a stoppage. (there were always styles against which Golovkin, whether he got the KO in the coda or not, could look sort of lackluster and ordinary, which is less true of the more dynamic Usyk)

In this alternate reality, where the former mecca of broadcast pugilism isn't on shaky ground and entering its final operational calendar year and his WBSS matches are showcased, imagine the profile Usyk could have built up just by the conclusion of 2018 alone...with the Briedis, Gassiev, and Bellew victories all taking place on WCB and heavily cross-promoted in between their other shows. Oleksandr's brand of halting, imperfect English is eminently more fetching than Gennady's, and his smile - the Ukrainian's more raffish than is the Kazakh's somewhat derpy offering - the readier for a closeup to spawn countless forum avatars, fight posters, and later even NFT's.

By now he would be their long-established franchise player, enough perhaps to fully offset Canelo's presence on rival Showtime (his defection being not the sole cause of death, but certainly a factor blamable for hastening the demise of HBO). Triumphing over Joshua, with Jim freaking Lampley on the call? Just imagine that for a moment.

Usyk has survived and thrived without them, obviously. It would have served HBO Boxing (in saving their bacon and keeping them on the airwaves) more than it would Usyk, obviously, but that doesn't take away from how mutually beneficial such a pairing had every chance of becoming. They'd still be #1 in the game, and he would be, perhaps unaltered in terms of his fight record, but a MUCH richer and more famous man.

 

tl:dr, I miss Jim & Max on commentary and would love to see Usyk doing SuperBowl commercials taking comically huge bites of a Big Mac, et al.

 

Usyk was younger when he started appearing on HBO and is more charming than Golovkin. He's also not the kind of "beautiful pure boxer" that's hard to sell to casual fans, like a Mayweather or a Cory Spinks. Like his teammate Loma (who became quite popular in his own right, in the lighter divisions no less), he brings technical excellence that's never really boring to watch. And let's remember that some of Golovkin's wins in his run on HBO were uncomfortable slogs until the stoppage.

 

WTF are you talking about? The phrase was used once in my OP in passing, and hardly its focal point. This isn't a "p4p thread".

Take it up with SRR, if the concept being a part of the sport's lexicon bothers you all that much.

 

The Cat >>>>> Big Gyppo Dosser.

 

Very Feel >>> kaleidoscopic decorative confectionaries, and not only that, but >>> Yespareil himself, the Mauler of yer NASA.