HBO Announces Today It Will No Longer Broadcast Boxing

DAZN should get rid of Mora and or Leonard and hire Roy asap, they are dreadful. He would bring stability to that team, don't know how well he would work with Brian Kenny though.

*edit* Also I like Bradley, he's not always the best to listen to but I liked him as a fighter so I can tolerate when he sucks.

 

It's about damn time no love lost HBOld. I was just thinking today before the big news how exhausted I was of their commentary.

I won't be surprised when Lampley sells Manpons

 

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I agree especially srl he has always been horrible calling fights. Rjj would be a massive upgrade.

 

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Ray while maybe the best welterweight of all time has always sucked at commentating. He used to have Roy Jones job on HBO years ago back in the late 70's & 80's. He was better at it then because he was more in practice, but he still ****ing sucked as a expert analyst.

 

Honestly gutted about this. Something like this is never good news for the sport. And say what you want about HBO, they were the premier boxing network who have given us lots of great events, they'll be missed dearly by me and I assume a lot of other boxing fans.

But you could see it coming from a mile away the way they've been performing recently.

 

Maybe not a bad idea, sport needs to die so in a phoenix-esque fashion to rise back from the ashes. Hopefully in a better state. Too much damage has been inflicted for over too long, and it's looking worse and worse day by day.

 

Good riddance to HBO, the premiere boxing script network!

 

Isn't Canelo about the age Floyd and Oscar were when they broke from Arum and started their own promotion company?

 

Saunders popped hot with VADA today. Look to Saunders vs Andrade getting canceled in the near future.

 

Sad day, but not surprising and essentially inevitable once HBO allowed itself to get squeezed out of the streaming model. Showtime gets it and is beginning to employ a hybrid approach, along obviously with the new PBC deal and DAZN. Not enough talent remaining for HBO to keep going.

The mistake they're making, I think, is that boxing made the network unique among content providers. Yes, I'm sure they'll hit some new successful shows, but they're just another competitor along with Netflix and everyone else in that game now. HBO had something in addition to that. Stupid to just let it go. I might keep it through GoT, but either way it's done after that.

The network's true boxing legacy, imo, is the way they stepped up production values to be state of the art. Always the best lighting, best graphics, historically (until they ruined it) the best music, highest dollar commentary team, etc., etc. Along with Lederman, Ray Torres ("pour some water on his balls"), et al, it was cast of characters unto itself. A big fight just didn't feel like as big as it could be unless it ran on their airwaves. But it has been dying a slow death the past two years, and time stands still for no one. So it goes.

 

Wow... It's kind of expected but still hard to believe...

 

Good. Them half assing it the way they have been for awhile and the horrible budgeting wasn't doing the sport any good anymore. Prime HBO was one thing. The shell of HBO? Not so much. The time to mourn was when the budget kept getting slashed down to a fraction of what it was in their heyday.

 

Like I said before. When they got rid of Merchant it was sort of the beginning of the end. He was irreplaceable. Kellerman was more like an ESPN guy, but not exciting like Merchant. And Tompkins I liked more than Lampley. The special era is gone fromt he 1980s. Ferdie Pacheco and Don Dunphy.. Gil Clancy and Tim Ryan.. Merchant and Tompkins.