Kery Davis: The Inner Workings of HBO’s World Championship Boxing

MA: What are the objectives for 2011?
To make the biggest and the best fights possible. Various years you might have some specific agendas as to how we want to accomplish that. For example, for 2010 one of the weight classes we wanted to concentrate on was the 140 pound division.
We saw that weight class had a lot of talent, depth, and young fighters who could potentially be stars. Also, the fighters at 140 were just below the 147 weight class that had the established stars in the sport. That was the agenda for 2010 to try to develop those fighters. 2011, now we are looking at those same weight classes to match up them goes against each other. To see who actually the best is…the cream of that crop so to speak. When you look at Bradley vs. Alexander… you look to have the winner of that fight meet Khan sometime later in the year. That’s a big part of our strategy, to have the top guys fight each other, for 2011. We are always looking to have the best matches we can… the biggest fights we can…and have the best storytelling. In terms of our production have the highest production that we can.

MA: How do you see Alexander vs. Bradley playing out?
That’s a really evenly matched fight. As a boxing fan, I look at that fight and I say to myself: “I could make a strong argument for either guy.” The popular wisdom is that Devon may have a little bit more skill and Bradley may have a little bit more will. But one of the things that I noticed watching their past fights is that Devon has more will than I thought and Bradley has a lot more skill than I thought. I think this fight is a pick’em. I think in the tenth round we are going to see that the fight is on the table going into the eleventh and twelfth rounds.

MA: Possible fight of the year?
That depends. That’s an interesting question. To me, sometimes how the media and the fans judge fight of the year sometimes differ from what we used to think fight of the year was twenty years ago. By that I mean, we think fight of the year right now. We think of two guys just rock’em-sock’em… two guys just hitting each other going back and forth. You look at a fight like Leonard vs. Hearns.
I, for example, that was a terrific drama filled fight which had ebbs and flows. There wasn’t ten knockdowns… they weren’t bleeding all over each other but the drama in the fight was high. Again, when the fight came down to the championship rounds, the fight was on the table for either guy to win. I think this fight could look a lot like a Leonard vs. Hearns I. I don’t expect it to be Hagler vs. Hearns… I expect it to be close to Leonard vs. Hearns because the skill level is so high for both these guys.

MA: In the past, you would see billboards across the country promoting a fight. Where does HBO see itself in terms of advertising for fights now?
Advertising has changed. Digital media plays a much stronger part of our advertising strategy then ten years ago. That’s a big factor. We still buy ads in newspapers, we still do radio, and the biggest promotional vehicle that we have is branding in our own network. But the digital strategy is a key component when we produce video assets.
One of the things that we have done different for Bradley vs. Alexander fight was to produce a “Face-Off with Max Kellerman,” which is reserved for HBO PPV fights. We did one for Mosley vs. Berto but that never aired because obviously that fight never happened. The benefit: It’s programming for our own network but also the type of video asset that we can use on the internet, whether it be on a website … iTunes… or HBO YouTube.




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