Amir Khan/Paul McCloskey To Be Shown on Primetime - Confirmed

In all seriousness, this is a very bad move from Khan's point of view.

I know his PR has always been a bit questionable, but this decision by his advisors really paints him as a tightfisted, money grabbing ****.

For me, the biggest flaw in the whole set up is that they air their laundry in public. Constant Twitter wars with journalists, the farce of the Peterson fight falling through over money and so on.

Given that Sky are effectively bankrolling domestic boxing it would be wise to keep them on side. The Khan set up seem to genuinely believe that it's him that's the PPV attraction - not a particular fight or event..... in order for fights to be on PPV you need to either have an intriguing matchup or a stacked bill. This is neither.

Sky did the right thing by taking this off PPV and offering them a slot on regular Sky Sports. So how did the Khan's react?

By immediately dragging McCloskey in and asking him to take a paycut atsch

Then because the money offered to them isn't enough (still substantial it has to be said) they spit the dummy out and go for a fringe PPV channel that has had no experience of putting together a production of it's own - for the Froch fights they've simply used the Showtime feed and had their own commentators.

In fact, this could backfire spectacularly if there aren't enough buys. Primetime will need a certain amount in order to cover their own costs of putting the show together, which, unless the buy rate is right, could leave Amir with less than what he would have got by sticking with Sky. The lack of American TV money doesn't help matters from their side.

There's no exposure to a large audience, no time (crucially) to try to sell the event, and no actual intrigue within it (or the card) to make it compulsive viewing.

Basically, they need to get their heads out of their arses and face facts. Khan is NOT a major draw over here, and should try and build himself. Sure, he seems a nice kid and is entertaining to watch, but is prone to regular gaffes with the mic in his hand which can put people off.

He's lucky that Golden Girl have HBO in their pocket - because otherwise it could all blow up around him, leaving himself with no TV deal and very few fans in his home country.

Ideally, he'd sack everyone around him - his dad, Asif Vali and the other clowns.... and get someone that actually knows what they are doing running the show, whoever that may be.

I know the likes of Laz will defend him even when they know he is wrong, but surely even they can see that this is a major gaffe from ''Team Khan'', and one that probably won't benefit them even in the short term.

I'm surprised Hatton Promotions are associating themselves with the whole charade, I suppose there's too little time remaining for them to do otherwise, the undercard fighters will have been training for several weeks and they won't want to let them down.

The only winner in this is Frank Warren. It just shows that despite his faults (and there are many) that he's the man when it comes to staging big promotions. He's got the right staff around him, they can always pull a reasonable opponent out of the hat at short notice and the shows are generally good to watch as a whole.

 

Saj confirmed it on twitter earlier.

 

As far as im aware, McCloskey seems to have a bee in his bonnet over the lack of interest shown by RTE, and ****in rightly so. They go overboard about a 2nd rater who won prizefighter (no offence to willie casey) but they wont entertain the notion of covering an undefeated irish european champs world title tilt???

 

Khan's team will probably want a big cut / throw a spanner with this also...

 

I think the thread could end with that post. That is 100% bang on in my opinion, well thought out and analysed.

 

I'm a Khan fan and I pretty much agree with everything your said.

Hatton promotions are just as wank as Khan promotions though. They could never have put up a decent PPV undercard to save their lives. What were Khan's team thinking about getting them to do it? They probably were the cheapest option.

They should have done things properly and worked out a deal out with FW to back up the main event.

 

I tried to get McCloskey on the Late Late Show or the Brendan O'Connor show and they basically said to me that "we had Kenny Egan on a couple of weeks ago and got Willie Casey on in a couple of weeks so we probably have enough boxers on these shows"

But to be fair to RTE they did invite him down to be on the Casey-Rigo panel and he turned that chance down as it didn't suit his training schedule. A missed opportunity in my opinion.

 

What's the score with television in Ireland?

I'm not going to pile into the Hattons over this, though they shouldn't be free of blame. They were brought in essentially to provide an undercard and will probably have been given a budget in order to do so - based on past PPV sales most likely.

As they aren't likely to make much money or get a great deal of exposure for their fighters, it doesn't make sense for them to throw in their biggest ticketsellers/names - though in fairness they were prepared to put Crolla in there, and both Murray and Munroe are on the card.... Rendall can shift tickets.

The biggest mistake they made was putting Macklin on the card as chief support. Whilst he probably made the right call in switching from Gevor to Sturm, you're asking for trouble with him because of his form for pulling out of fights for spurious reasons..... I'm sure there were other avenues they could have explored that were less likely to result in a late change.

For a relatively new company they aren't doing so badly. They've got a decent stable of promising fighters and they're doing as much as they can to keep them active. Not sure what's going on between them and the Gallagher camp but it doesn't seem great - maybe they're off lock and stock to Allegedly :think

Is Khan still on fairly good terms with Warren.... obviously he left under a cloud but there hasn't been the same kind of criticism that Hatton got when he left.... maybe Warren was kinda relieved in a way because Khan carried so much baggage.

 

I'm suprised. Khan is a well known boxer in Ireland is he not? I'd have thought your media would be lapping up the fight.

 

Can someone please quote saj or link to a confirmation that this will be on primetime

 

spot on, pretty scathing but it is what it is

end thread on this wise old man


(greasy teenager sitting in his own filth in leeds?)

 

Its now been taken down from Primetime's facebook. Interesting.

 

in the north boxing is a proper covered sport. The irish news, the telegraph donate sometimes 1 or 2 full pages in their sport sections solely to boxing, wheras in the south it doesnt seem to have the same hardcore boxing fans. BBC Ni covered Duddy, Haughian and report it on their news at half 6

ricky hatton for example would have sold out fighting an irishman, khan wont for some reason.


Southern fairys

 

the last few days have been quite funny for anyone with dislike towards team khan, this could be the beginning of the end......happy days

 

rejected by primetime