What Happens to HBO's Video Library

Do they just go into a vault and get warehoused somewhere? Does anybody know what happened to all of ABC's Fight of the Week fights from the 60s or NBC's 50s Cavalcade of Sports? It's hard to find much of anything from that twenty year period. There should really be a channel that just shows old classic fights.

How many of the best fights did HBO get during their 45 year run? Half? Can such a huge part of the sport's collective record be allowed to sit on a shelf somewhere and collect dust?

 

Well they still have their old library of Friday Night Fights 1998-2015. There was good stuff there like Ward vs Burton and Pavel Wolak vs Delvin Rodriguez I. Plus, I think they usually gave prospects their start before they headed off to HBO and Showtime, so you'll see the early careers of Mayweather, Rigondeaux, or Klischko there.

But that would be a great thing for boxing, to have one centralized database where you could see everything. I think most of USA's Tuesday Night Fights from the 80s and 90s made it to youtube. I wish everything were so easy. I was trying to compile a list of the best fights of the sixties recently and there was almost nothing to be had. There were suggestions, print records, but the footage had vanished.

 

Do you think people still want to own DVD's? I think the future is streaming.

 

I hear that UFC has this thing called fight pass where you can see all the old fights, plus the library they bought when Pride went bankrupt. Be nice if ESPN did that. But that would be a rosy outcome wouldn't it? Some of these big multi-national corporations just lock things away and sit on 'em till the only negative burns up in a fire at the MGM or Paramount lot. It's because of things like this happening that we don't have a print of Harry Greb vs Mickey Walker and other stuff.

A lot of 80s and 90s kickboxing is just gone too. And ever since K-1 collapsed Glory has been keeping their stuff on lockdown, scrubbing it from the web like Showtime usually does.

 

Srzs?