Has there ever been a worse commentary team than what we got for Canelo-Crawford?

• SOG - has some fans but I would say is heavily disliked by about 2/3 - 75% of the boxing community (and has been since his prime)
  
  
• Max - always had detractors who found him a smug unqualified pipsqueak, but was fairly respected in his ESPN and HBO days...now a complete and utter shameless shill for Turki and Dana. I've never seen so much (deserved) hate levied toward a lead commentator as during last night's RBR.
  
  
• random MMA dipshite - ???

The fact that they had a pundit panel of Antonio Tarver, Mark Kriegel and Mario López (a washed celebrity who, sure, doesn't have any real reason to be there other than being a longtime superfan, but he does know his boxing) but relegated them to just pre and post fight breakdowns is an outrage. They dangled a B+ team in our face and stuck us with a D- one.

 

There's plenty of German broadcasts from back in the day that make yesterday's broadcast look like The Rumble in the Jungle so I vote no.

 

Question, why in the hell do they need 4 guys commentating? Keep it to 2. A professional commentator and an ex pro fighter or trainer that is articulate and unbiased.

 

I don't care about commentary much these days as long as they aren't annoying or making stuff up that's not happening in the fight. Typically with three men in the booth you get a lot of banter/chatter type of BS.

I didn't find the Netflix commentary to be any worse than ESPN+ or DAZN. I actually don't mind Andre Ward as a commentator, I think his experiences as a high level fighter allows him to point out or talk about the fight in a way that gives insight. Max to me is very hit or miss but I felt he has become way too jargon-y GOAT this GOAT that blah blah blah, undisputed, Ring titles etc. its like these commentators are trying to signal around with buzzwords. Anik the UFC commentator was fine.

For commentators the mold of the 3 in the booth is normally broadcast guy (Lampley, Mauro, Tessitore etc.), Ex-fighter/Trainer (Steward, Jones, Cysz, Bradley) and a journalist/writer/other boxing adjacent guy (Merchant, Bernstein, Pacheco, Kriegal etc.) . I tend to find this mix works as you need the guy with the voice who just talks about what's going on and generates excitement. The fighter/trainer gives some expert insight and the journalist/writer type brings some history and context and maybe can argue or check the fighter despite a lack of practical experience and the fighter can in turn check the writer/journalist when they say something that comes from a lack of experience.

My problem is when the play by play guy starts veering out of their lane trying to get into the finer points or makes bad calls like yelling about hard right hands that missed. The fighters and the journalist/writer can show biases or can wind up arguing too much (Bradley and Kriegal) leading to an annoying broadcast.

Typically I am ok with the Bob Sheridan, David Bontempo mold where one guy just talks about what's going on in the ring from a play by play stand point and the other interjects here or there to make sense of the action.

I think the real issue with the broadcast last night was just the fart sniffing level of pageantry and time wasting. I watched the fight with my dad who grew up watching boxing and really does not follow it closely anymore. It made me wonder if the huge delays for the main event, long drawn out advertisement for ring Magazine, all of the GOAT talk BS, and other long ring walks and build up did more to help or harm the sport for casual fans or lapsed fans to try and bring in a new audience. Like if you never watched boxing before or stopped and was curious to comeback, did last night do anything to create a long term interest in the sport or are we just as silo'd off as ever

 

Andre Ward as a commentator is a less (unintentionally) entertaining and more annoying version of Tim Bradley.

Which is funny, because in the ring Andre Ward was a less entertaining and more annoying version of Tim Bradley.