HBO Support For Euro Fighters?

These guys will fight anyone for cheap, fight often and have crowd pleasing styles. What's not to like if you're a network?

 

well, there are a lot of Russian, Poles, ect living in the US, so off the top you have a potentially big fan base, like Adamek in NJ, Fonfara in Chicago, plus EE fighters have been doing very well in the ams in the last few years, also HBO will have the bad experience of promoting such guys like Berto and Dirrell, whose hypetrains later crashed in spectacular fashion, so I kind of see their point of view

 

yeah its more then usual because of the conflict between SHO/HBO..

HBO has to do something and they thought a good move would to be to invest in guys like kovalev and gennady golovkin...

 

The where forced into when they lost Floyd and Golden boy. It was lucky for them thAt the guys are solid and deserve a push( GGG, Kov and prov)

 

Its not the channel, its the promoters.

Bob has realized he can pick up good, cheap fighters in Eastern Europe, and HBO shows his fighters.

 

none of the 3 guys he's talking about are with top rank though

 

It's because eastern euro's are currently huge bargains- fan friendly styles for discount prices. It's just smart business, but HBO'll have to allocate more money to their budgets to attract the best of the best to fight them.

 

More importantly, they're not with Golden Boy

 

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the European heritage of most of those controlling the networks and most of the promoters as well.
There is a good reason why Don King, Emmanuel Stewart and Roy Jones have been spending all of their time over in Russia.

 

i agree, the money factor is also a key reason for this change of policy, but guys like Korobov, Mekhonstev or Loma were very succesful ams, which is why TR signed them, but as for Kovalev and GGG, they are special fighters, though as you say, GG is yet to have a fight establishing him as the real deal, to me both guys are special fighters with eye-catching styles and will continue to do great numbers and attract the big fights down the road

 

I don't think they've been moved that slow. They just fight often on a limited budget, and it's too much risk for the reward for most guys. Kovalev was a nobody last year, destroyed a titlist, a should be titlist, and a couple of fringe contenders, and wants champ Stevenson ASAP. GGG hasn't gotten the same chances, which is not for the lack of trying. HBO knows since they keep making offers to name MWs, and keep getting rejected. Either way great value for HBO, they paid GGG like 400k vs Stevens and got 1.4m viewers.

 

Why push exciting foreigh fighters when you can stay status quo and force either boring or overrated, many times both, domestic fighters down our throats?

HBO is simply keeping pace with the changing times.

 

This is the most important factor that answers the OP's question.

HBO pays Kovalev and GGG a fraction of what a U.S. fighter of the same talent and ratings drawing power would demand. So, they can afford to schedule those fighters more frequently, but not against the very top opposition. This trend will continue until the allocated budgets HBO has for GGG and Kovalev increase.

The lower fight budget is also why GGG and Kovalev try to schedule one fight a year off-network to supplement their HBO income (Kovalev will likely miss or have to delay that tune-up fight this year because of the cuts he just got).