Captain Bob Arum
RESPECT THE GENIUS OF MASTER BOB!
San Francisco, CA– With Showtime figuratively cutting off the corporate testicles of HBO by snatching Manny Pacquiao away from them for a May 7 fight with Shane Mosley, where does that leave HBO Sports boss Ross Greenburg? It should put him in the unemployment line! Since he took over circa 2000 for a genius of a man Seth Abraham, Ross has done some of the greatest baseball and sports specials in history. But his failings with his boxing productions are so blatant that it would appear to some that HBO was looking to dump boxing, thus instead of doing something about the leak in the HBO ship, the suits instead seemingly got together and drilled more holes in order to accelerate the sinking!
HBO SPIT ON ARUM & BOB SHIT ON HBO!
Look, Bob Arum, like us all has limits. When HBO signed that “exclusive” contract with Golden Boy Promotions, they threw monkey dung in the face the Top Rank CEO. Not the silent type, Arum bitched and moaned to no avail. I thought the deal was bad for boxing, much like the pact Don King had with Showtime and the late Jay Larkin. Those fights were so bad, the vast majority being one-sided mismatches so hideous you didn’t even bother to watch. This preceded Larkin’s departure and Showtime’s boxing rebirth. After the Al Heyman “Bat-phone” was installed on HBO Sports VP Kerry Davis’ desk, the most powerful and influential promoter of the past 50 years, Bob Arum was kicked to the curb.
TOP RANK PPV CARDS OR YOUTUBE.COM
One of the reasons Arum went with those sometimes not so thrilling Latin Fury PPV cards was that Top Rank couldn’t get their fighters on YouTube let alone HBO. Now with Showtime PPV airing Pacman-Mosley and CBS showing the fight delayed to 115,000,000 million potential viewers, this is the best thing to happen to boxing since the Gillette “Friday Night Fights.”
WITHOUT ELVIS PACQUIAO, HBO HAS NO “SUPERSTAR”
Outside of middleweight (160 lbs.) champion Sergio Martinez, HBO has little “superstar” boxing talent. Don’t understand why they (HBO) would even waste TV time with pretenders like Andre Berto. Could it be a relationship with Al “10 Points” Heyman. Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel headline the best HBO Boxing After Dark fight of the new century on February 19. Outside of that, they don’t have much.
IF I WERE HBO I’D USE COM MON SEN SE
Paying the aforementioned Andre Berto or Chad Dawson $1 million US to fight is absurd. Berto has never shown us anything “special” and Dawson, well.Larry Merchant said tbhat, “If Chad Dawson is one of the best fighters in the world, then I’m Edward R. Murrow, quite possibly the greatest TV newsman of all time.
HOW CAN HBO RECLAIM BOXING GLORY?
HBO has relationships with several networks. They need to start airing good fights on TNT, Spike TV, Bravo, etc. to try and counter Showtime & CBS. In closing, the building that houses HBO is located at 1100 Ave of The Americas. Unfortunately for Home Box Office, there is only one Elvis Presley in boxing, and Elvis (Manny Pacquiao) has left the building!
Pedro Fernandez