HBO, which kept boxing alive for many years, has ceded dominance to Showtime without much of a fight?
Saturday night at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska, in a fight televised live on HBO, Omaha?s favorite son, WBC/WBO super lightweight champion Terence Crawford (30-0, 21 KOs), slaughtered John Molina Jr. (29-7, 23 KOs), the rugged competitor from Covina, California, ending his and the viewer?s pain at 2:32 of the eighth round.
Not only did Molina fail to make the 140-pound weight limit at Friday?s weigh-in, he failed, but not for want of trying, to acquit himself against one of the most talented boxers in the game today.
That Molina performed as poorly as he did came as no surprise and may in fact have been the idea all along. He had not fought in a year a half, since defeating Ruslan Provodnikov in his last outing. Coming into Saturday?s bout he had lost three of his last five fights (or five of his last 10 dating back to 2012) against solid competition. The majority of those losses were by decision, a testament to Molina?s staying power. But he had no business being in the ring with a fighter the caliber of Crawford, who methodically broke him down before lowering the boom.
The final CompuBox stats tell the story. Crawford landed 184 of 410 total punches thrown (43.9%) to Molina?s 41 of 287 (14.3%). He landed 75 of 202 jabs (37.1%) to Molina?s 19 of 96 (19.8%). It was no better when it came to power punches. Crawford connected with 109 of 217 (a whopping 50.2%) to 22 of 191 (11.5%) for Molina.
There?s something to be said for watching one man dismantle another, call it a perverse pleasure, but the fight was an unwatchable mismatch. Even Jim Lampley, Max Kellerman, and Roy Jones could find nothing good to say about it.
With dueling fight cards on the same night at the exact same time, something of a specialty between HBO and Showtime, HBO came up woefully short against the powerhouse fight card televised from L.A. Granted, a hometown crowd of 11,270 packed the CenturyLink Center, where Crawford was fighting for the third time this year, creating a celebratory air. But matching him against Molina, while perhaps not a new low, succeeded in serving notice, and not for the first time, that HBO, which kept boxing alive for many years, has ceded dominance to Showtime without much of a fight.
We were led to believe that HBO had seen the light and had installed knowledgeable boxing people to run the show, instead of the requisite bean counters who had earned their stripes in frozen food or whatever. Absorbing its critics to shut them up was one step in this process. Putting a boxing writer in charge, who presumably understood the ins and outs of the sport, was another. But if Saturday?s spectacle is any evidence, HBO is allowing promoters, who supply the product, to call the shots and push their agenda, to the detriment of boxing and the cable giant.
?I think I should get a lot of credit for what I did this year, especially tonight,? said Crawford after the fight. ?I showed I could be a finisher.?
But what if Molina was finished before the opening bell, as appears to be the case?
No knock on Crawford, who is a fantastic talent. He fights whoever they put in front of him. But he needs to be matched with elite opponents who don?t follow him around the ring while eating right hands in the hope of landing one big Hail Mary to end it.
Boxing and its loyal fans deserve nothing less.
