Why was HBO boxing abolished?

It's a shame.
A dang shame.

 

The face of HBO boxing after Floyd was inarguably GGG. Unfortunately for him, and them, in the year preceding the decision to close up shop, he suffered the first two blemishes of his pro career. And while many of us believe he should've gotten the nod over Canelo both times (and pretty much every sane fan of the sport except shadow11 can at least see the argument for him being 2-0) it didn't shake out that way officially, so their biggest cashcow lost a good deal of his marketing luster.

And, much as @Lesion of Doom was saying above, they had pretty much all their eggs in the Golovkin basket having their biggest remaining exclusive partnership deal with a promoter be Loeffler*, with a secondary line of talented but far less globally established stars like Bivol, Chocolatito (huge among diehard boxing nerds and Nicaraguans, but otherwise...?) and Brækhus. So when the SS GGG bumped into an iceberg, even though it didn't outright sink him, it sank his network. Or was a major contributing factor anyway.

*A half decade prior, longtime partner GBP defected to Showtime - basically switching places with Top Rank. This would have been fine, aside from the fact (that HBO couldn't foresee) that ESPN was planning to step up and increase its televised boxing footprint and go for championship events instead of staying content to be the Friday night showcase of prospects and fringe contenders. Arum got a more favorable deal and ditched HBO for ESPN just two years after Golden Boy left. And yeah, HBO didn't want to put up with PBC's nonsense so now they essentially were frozen out from any dealings with the new Big Three. Golovkin had to carry the whole shebang on his back - and he tried, but the judges in the first two Canelo fights put their collective thumbs on the scale and that was that.

 

That may be true, but one thing I gotta give props on is that NOBODY is messing with dazn when it comes to the highlights. Quality and speed at which they’re uploaded is second to none, ever.

 

HBO went out of business because of GGG they lost money giving him higher paydays only for him to reuse to fight anybody good

 

Weird take.

He fought Canelo twice, and Jacobs. Both were high reward but high risk.

Wade and Murray were mandatory; Martirosyan a last minute replacement. Monroe Jr. was a consolation prize after pursuing Ring Mag & lineal champ Miguel Cotto for the better part of a year. Lemieux was a unification. Rubio was mandatory, not to Golovkin himself perhaps but to Cotto's piece of the championship pie, the WBC. Geale was a ranked good fighter and recent IBF world titlist. Rosado and Stevens were both ranked #9 by Ring Magazine when they fought Golovkin. Macklin was a respected contender. Proksa was a highly regarded prospect.

Who that GGG fought on HBO that wasn't good do you consider to have been his choice/fault? I was going to say maybe Ossie Adama - but forgot that HBO actually had the sense to not air that dud (nor Ishida, his other defense in Monte Carlo)

 

I consider the period between that verbose old coot's departure and the bitter end to be the all too brief golden era of HBO Boxing.

 

I miss Manny...and Harold.

 

The people allowed, generously, to run the sport, completely destroyed the public viewership of the sport, then HBO noticed that for completely obvious reasons, fans just didn't care as much about what they were getting, and they decided to reallocate their budgets to make shows for hipster kids living outside of flyover states who spend a lot on fancy coffee and glasses that don't match normal clothes so they can look geeky to seem cool(?) which might not make any sense to me.

 

Jim, Larry, Manny and Harold were the A team.

 

Jim, Max & Emmanuel were my favorite team, just because Larry was too much of a casual for me. But respect for his style.

As mentioned, the production values alone made HBO fights feel like events. When Pacquaio had the one-off fight on Showtime, it just wasn't the same. And that's before we even begin to talk about DAZN, which looks produced by an 8th grader.

 

bro Canelo was a money fight and everybody within 3 divisions will stall out they entire career hoping and wishing to get picked, and the Jacobs fight almost didn’t happen because of GGG playing games, GGG refused to negotiate or make any type of concession ever to make a good fight… let’s not bring up GGG hiding behind weak mandatories gtfoh

 

The old guard of HBO execs didn't used to elevate profit over customer base retention/loyalty. AT&T/Nelson did, as soon as they showed up, with no thought given or care for the built up equity involved. And those clowns weren't even around that long anyway, in a cruel twist. So if they'd never come along in the first place we still would be tuning into WCB every Saturday night.