I’m probably more fascinated by the Showtime versus HBO war in the boxing landscape than most, but frankly it’s by far the most intriguing fight out there at the moment to me. So how is this shaping up and shaking out, and what are the impressions being given by both sides at this time?
The Big Blow
Before we can get into it, let’s take a quick moment and remember that this is all happening because Showtime scored the May 7 pay-per-view fight between Manny Pacquiao, who is by far boxing’s most bankable star (with Mayweather on the sidelines indefinitely), and veteran star Shane Mosley. While it’s true that Mosley is not who he used to be, I think a few things must be noted.
1. Almost nobody saw Mosley’s September “fight” with Sergio Mora, which ended in a draw. That fight, as horrible as it was and as bad as Mosley looked, has next to no real impact on this fight’s marketing potential.
2. Mosley did lose badly to Mayweather, but a lot of people paid to see it.
3. Outside of Pacquiao and the all-but-gone Mayweather, nobody in boxing really draws consistently. All that “he’s not a draw” talk is comparing Mosley to Oscar or Floyd or now Manny. He doesn’t draw as well as those guys, but he’s a bigger draw than pretty much anyone else of his era, and probably close to the level of Miguel Cotto or Juan Manuel Marquez at this stage. This fight won’t break records or anything, but I think it’ll be fine. Pacquiao-Mosley will sell. It will sell for a lot of reasons, the biggest being that it involves Pacquiao. But getting CBS affiliation is big, too. Top Rank is pretty obviously trying to wrangle boxing back onto network TV, and Manny’s the best shot they have. If he can open the doors, there are a lot of fighters I think can benefit from that.
What’s Already Happened
HBO has had two shows so far in 2011. On January 29, Timothy Bradley beat Devon Alexander in what many termed a disappointing fight, and what others figured was exactly what should have been expected. Bradley-Alexander being called a superfight was silly — they should never have tried to market it that way, because it made the reality of what the fight was look worse than it probably should have. No, they couldn’t sell tickets in Pontiac, Michigan. What a shocker, huh? The fact that it looked and sounded pretty bad on TV — look, if you were new to boxing and you heard that was a superfight, what would you think? That boxing is even more of a niche sport than it really is. I don’t blame the fighters. Bradley and Alexander are both good young fighters with plenty of career ahead of them, and while their fight was no thriller, it wasn’t likely to be, either. I really think everyone (HBO, Gary Shaw, Don King) did that fight a disservice by promoting it the wrong way and sticking it in a gigantic dome that sucked the life out of the TV broadcast.
The card last night in Las Vegas with Nonito Donaire drilling Fernando Montiel was pretty solid. It was a main event below 126 pounds, which is almost impossibly rare for HBO, and shows that at least someone over there is starting to think outside the box a little bit. HBO could have been featuring a lot of guys for years that they didn’t, and in the meantime Showtime used a lot of those guys to build up a hardcore boxing fan audience. I really believe that Showtime’s current product and fanbase was built largely on the backs of guys like Israel Vazquez, Rafael Marquez, Vic Darchinyan, etc.
With Ken Hershman so willing to go in different directions, featuring the action-packed fights of the smaller fighters and incredibly bold concepts like the Super Six, we’ve seen Showtime grow into a position where taking a money risk on Pacquiao-Mosley and Miguel Cotto’s next fight is something they can do. HBO feels stale in comparison, and has for a while now. Showtime hasn’t even run a major card this year, but so far they’ve dominated HBO overall.
