?One of the things I hear all the time now,? says Ross Greenburg, ?is that everyone?s problems seem to be HBO?s fault. That?s getting tiring for us. Most of what happens in boxing is beyond our control.?
One of boxing?s problems in 2010 is that the top promoters are fighting each other more often than the top fighters are fighting each other. The issues that HBO faces today are playing out against an increasingly ugly war between Golden Boy and Top Rank.
When Don King and Bob Arum ruled the roost, they disliked each other just as much as Richard Schaefer and Arum dislike each other. But the big fights between their fighters got made.
Pat English (who has served as counsel for Main Events since the 1980s) notes, ?When Main Events promoted Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker, Lennox Lewis, and others, we didn?t have insurmountable problems making fights with other promoters. What has changed is that, in those days, promoters were promoters and knew how to build fighters and had to work together. Now most promoters are little more than packagers looking for a date and a big license fee from HBO, and HBO has trouble brokering the big fights.?
Top Rank has been criticized for refusing to put its big money-makers in against fighters controlled by competing promoters. To a degree, that?s true. But Arum tried to make Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr earlier this year. He co-promoted an April 17th fight in which Kelly Pavlik lost the middleweight championship to Sergio Martinez (a Lou DiBella fighter). On June 26th, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (a potential cash cow for Arum) fought John Duddy (a promotional free agent). On November 6th, Juan Manuel Lopez (one of Top Rank?s most promising young stars) will risk his elite status against Rafael Marquez (promoted by Gary Shaw).
Meanwhile, Arum and Schaefer have been sniping at each other for years. Their war escalated in late-2009, when Golden Boy supported the Mayweather camp in propagating the view that Pacquiao (Top R
