It seems to me that the boxing world is puting all its chips on this fight. Pacquiao and his Mexican buddies are retired or finished. Gatti and Ward are gone. Martinez is finished. Williams is in a wheelchair. HW boxing has been dead since Holyfield. We have some good fighters, but guys like Loma and GGG don't seem to have the opposition available or willing to fight them. Gonzalez, Estrada and Cuadras are fine fighters. But 112 pound shoulders can't carry boxing. Which brings us to Ward and Kovalev. Two undefeated, p4p prime LightHeavyweights. If the fight stinks that's going to sting hard.
It may stink but at least it won't stink as hard as May-Pac or Crawford-Postol. Reason being is that Ward isn't as much of a "runner" as those guys, he's more scrappy. So yeah, even if it flops it should be better than those two stinkfests.
If it flops though it could destroy HBO. Look at how the budget has been slashed so heavily recently.
Maybe, but I'm not sure how much they're putting into this and how much they're expecting. I doubt they're putting everything into this one.
Why wasn't HBO worried about this back when they were funding Pacquiao vs Rios and Pacquiao vs Algieri for $20 million a pop in Manny's account? HBO became a money pit trying to compete with Al Haymon, Mayweather, and Showtime and now they have to teach these fighters how to market themselves for a change, not just HBO but all of boxing. Maybe it's good that boxing is tore all they way down and they will have to rebuild on "scraps" (double entendre).
I wonder if that could eventually lead to something good. Maybe HBO will slash these moronic PPV´s. Kovalev-Ward had potential to grown the HBO Boxing/Sports brand, yet they smacked a PPV price on it.
No boxing is not in trouble, it is a completely sustainable product. Ward/KKkovalev will not suck as Ward tames the boogeyman, and Ward/kkkov 2 will be just as fire if Beterbiev doesn't mess things up.
Kovalev Ward is a PPV fight though. The only other HBO ppv worthy fight this year has been Pac/BATB 3 esp with young master Valdez on the UC.
How many times are people gonna say that boxing is gonna "die?" People have been saying that since Jack Dempsey retired.
Good point on the not as much of a runner but boxing most definately could use a super superfight. When is the last super superfight? ...............Vitali Klitchko - Lennox Lewis maybe......
How was that a super super fight? Lewis was half retired, didn't fight in a year since knocking out Tyson, and was either looking for a rematch with Tyson or a fight with Kirk Johnson. When Tyson didn't fancy a rematch, Lewis was scheduled to fight Johnson and Vitali was supposed to fight on the undercard. Johnson pulled out and the fight came about on 2 weeks notice. It was a great bout and the last historic fight between 2 truly great HW's, but it felt rushed. I blame Johnson since Vitali and Lewis were scheduled to fight December of 2003 instead of June. If he never pulled out, we never would of got a "what if" or tko6.
Is it really worth it though? Right from the start the promoional entities behind the fight kept talking about how they have modest expectations for the PPV sales. HBO should have kept it on regular HBO. Unless it really is a budget issue.