Tonight,
a split-site doubleheader on HBO takes place from Mexico City (where Saul Alvarez
faces Kermit Cintron) and Cincinnati (where Adrien Broner takes on Vicente
Martin Rodriguez). This will be another installment of “Boxing After Dark” but
it will be the last for Golden Boy Promotions under their exclusive output deal
they inked a few years ago while Ross Greenburg was President of HBO Sports.
Greenburg
was jettisoned during the summer and soon ex-Showtime boxing czar Ken Hershman
will take over the position beginning in early January.
When
this agreement was made (ensuring that Golden Boy got a certain amount of dates
on HBO every year), it was during the era when they could leverage the
pay-per-view titan that was Oscar De La Hoya. However, the “Golden Boy” was
retired by Manny Pacquiao in December
of 2008 and as this
deal comes to an end, GBP must more or less operate on the same playing field
with the rest of its competitors.
According
to their CEO, Richard Schaefer, for them, it will be business as usual.
“In
a way, it changes and in other ways, it doesn't,” he told Maxboxing earlier
this week. “What will not change is that we are going to continue to try to put
together the best possible fights and the fact is with HBO and the new
leadership with Ken Hershman and with Showtime under the new leadership of
Stephen Espinoza, the both of them are starting the New Year from scratch,
fresh. So both networks are interested in bringing the best fights to their
respective subscribers and it's going to be interesting.”
The
hope is that by having all the dates essentially open, that instead of a litany
of in-house match-ups, the best possible bouts can be made between all the
promotional firms. Golden Boy actually delivered some solid fights under their
agreement (from Juan Manuel Marquez-Michael Katsidis and, most recently, James
Kirkland-Alfredo Angulo) but with “their dates,” they could be every bit as
insular as Top Rank, who is so often accused of keeping things under its own
umbrella. This weekend’s show is interesting, to say the least. While nobody
can deny “Canelo’s” appeal at the box-office or in the Nielsens, he's facing an
opponent who, in his last appearance on a premium cable network in July, was
beaten decisively by Carlos Molina. And Broner facing an unknown Argentinean
for one of those belts that HBO always tells us are so meaningless, well, that's
another example of the influence of the (Al) Haymon Boxing Organization.
But
make no doubt about it; this is a new era for boxing as new leadership takes
over at both HBO and Showtime. It raised more than a few eyebrows when
Espinoza, a former attorney for Golden Boy, was named to replace Hershman at
Showtime. Some in the industry have speculated that perhaps it means that the
GBP/Haymon alliance will now pitch their tents “across the street.”
“Well,
it seems like we can't do anything right,” said Schaefer, when asked about
Espinoza's hiring at Showtime and the effect it would have on his company. “When
Ross Greenburg was there, Ross was supposedly in my pocket and was my friend
and we got an output deal and everybody was crying about it. Then the
powers-that-be got Ross out of HBO and then Ken moves over there and the
Showtime job opens and now Stephen is there and now I'm responsible for all of
that. I mean, if I was the one who orchestrated that, I definitely think those power
rankings they have about “the most powerful person in boxing,” I think I should
be number one. So if I have that kind of power...but look, the fact is I have
the highest regard for Ken Hershman, I have the highest for Stephen and they
will do what they feel is right and buy the right fights for their respective
networks.
“The
fact I consider both of them friends doesn't really matter,” he insists. “I
mean, I've done a lot of business with HBO and I'm friendly with them and I'm
friendly with Showtime and so that's a good thing. So I'm going to continue to
do what I do and as I always tell you, other promoters they call around and
they bitch and moan and everything. I'm just here in my office doing my job and
putting together fights and being a bit more strategic than the others.”
It'll
be interesting to see where all this goes.
.
