One of a kind, Marquez vs Pacquiao 1 HBO/Sky Sports Hybrid

My latest enterprise. Enjoy if you should choose to do so

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Hey all! Thanks for the kind words of appreciation. I am just glad that other fans appear to enjoy watching these fights, many of which we have all seen countless times already, under a different lens though, in an attempt to see some fights from completely different angles and points of view.

 

No, sorry Chris, I do not have it...yet. The only other English language commentary I have ran into for that fight, so far, is the international feed and has commentary provided by Rich Marotta and I think Alan Massengale, which I think is up on Golden Boy's YT channel. Do you happen to remember who did the Sky commentary? As for your assertion that HBO was pushing a narrative that Barrera was winning the fight...as they got deeper into the fight it does begin to sound so. But I do think Barrera was in there, keeping it close, and I think he was, maybe until the final third of the fight, in a position where he could possibly have won the fight, buuuuuttt....we know how that worked out. What follows is an exercise in boredom. waiting on my dog at the vet, the results of which are the ramblings below.

I have these little boxing conspiracy theories that I come up with outta boredom sometimes and here is one that involves Barrera and HBO. By the time Hamed vs Barrera was officially in the works and was obviously gonna happen, HBO had soured heavily on being in the Hamed business. Not the money aspect as, its boxing, and money makes the boxing world go round. They had soured on Hamed the individual. Listening to his HBO fights you can just tell that Jim and Larry didn't like him. I came across a HBO podcast regarding the Hamed vs Kelly fight, and Lampley does a bit of an interview for it and he goes on a some about the behind the scenes workings of putting Hamed fights together and as it is 15ish yrs after the fact, he really wasn't sugarcoating or anything. Hamed was an incredible pre Madonna, doing none of the things every fighter before him would do, such as the fighter meetings. Being late. being a entitled, etc. You only gotta watch Barrera vs Hamed one time, and not even know the story about either, to hear in the voices of Lampley and Merchant that watching Barrera beating Hamed was an early Christmas present for them. Barrera sunk the HMS Hamed, extricating HBO from the Hamed business and HBO never seemed to forget that. Seriously, just listening to the difference in the HBO commentary for a Barrera fight pre-Hamed and post Hamed is night and day almost. They must have seriously disliked the guy to be happy to see a potential money making star falter like that. They absolutely LOVED Barrera for that it seems (to be honest, the vast majority of the boxing fan community not based in the UK feels likewise) and Jim Lampley was Barrera's chief trumpeter. throughout the rest of his HBO career it was like that..well, that is unless he was fighting Pacquiao and losing to him. But, as long as it wasn't Pacquiao sharing the ring with Barrera, he was ALWAYS given the benefit of the commentary team. They always did that there at HBO. Case in point, and I apologize for how long it took me to get here, but the Marquez fight. Barrera was competitive throughout the fight, as i said earlier. But he most certainly didn't win the fight, even without the point deductions did I see him win the fight. He sure as hell gave us, and Marquez too, a great fight. His last good fight where he was competitive with a world class fighter, anyway, as he wasn't exactly that in his following fight which was the Pac rematch

 

I shoulda thought to mention that, while it may read as though I am $#itting on Barrera there, I am most certainly and absolutely not.

 

Are you a pom living across the sea from the good ol' Merka States, then? If so, was it you that's the son of Alan Rudkin, perchance?