By Jake Donovan - Ugh.
It’s the automatic reaction anytime any show not featuring a superstar-level main event goes the pay-per-view route. The collective groans are often for good reason, as it’s far too often when promoters chase a quick buck rather than truly giving fight fans their money’s worth.
On the surface, it’s nearly impossible to justify the $44.95 price tag that comes with this weekend’s offering, a split-site independent pay-per-view, featuring Miguel Cotto and Kelly Pavlik in separate main events in separate locations.
Cotto will take on Michael Jennings in a welterweight bout that captures top billing at Madison Square Garden, before the broadcast – in the words of event promoter Bob Arum – “magically shifts over” to Youngstown, Ohio, where favorite son Kelly Pavlik puts his lineal middleweight crown on the line against Marco Antonio Rubio.
Both fighters are coming off of their first career loss, and both in devastating fashion. Neither will be facing a foe that threatens to make it two straight losses. Once you get past the perceived mismatched co-main events, the rest of the card runs extremely thin, especially in the wake of Anthony Peterson suffering an injury, scrapping his lightweight fight with Edner Cherry.
So why should we care about this event, again?
Because of the effort being put into it by a single entity.
This isn’t your garden variety, play-with-house-money pay-per-screw, where the promoter collects his booking fee from the network willing to fund the event, and the fans are left out to dry. Every nickel of this split site event is coming out of Arum’s pocket, for the sake of keeping two of his stars busy while positioning them for bigger things to come later in the year. [details]
It’s the automatic reaction anytime any show not featuring a superstar-level main event goes the pay-per-view route. The collective groans are often for good reason, as it’s far too often when promoters chase a quick buck rather than truly giving fight fans their money’s worth.
On the surface, it’s nearly impossible to justify the $44.95 price tag that comes with this weekend’s offering, a split-site independent pay-per-view, featuring Miguel Cotto and Kelly Pavlik in separate main events in separate locations.
Cotto will take on Michael Jennings in a welterweight bout that captures top billing at Madison Square Garden, before the broadcast – in the words of event promoter Bob Arum – “magically shifts over” to Youngstown, Ohio, where favorite son Kelly Pavlik puts his lineal middleweight crown on the line against Marco Antonio Rubio.
Both fighters are coming off of their first career loss, and both in devastating fashion. Neither will be facing a foe that threatens to make it two straight losses. Once you get past the perceived mismatched co-main events, the rest of the card runs extremely thin, especially in the wake of Anthony Peterson suffering an injury, scrapping his lightweight fight with Edner Cherry.
So why should we care about this event, again?
Because of the effort being put into it by a single entity.
This isn’t your garden variety, play-with-house-money pay-per-screw, where the promoter collects his booking fee from the network willing to fund the event, and the fans are left out to dry. Every nickel of this split site event is coming out of Arum’s pocket, for the sake of keeping two of his stars busy while positioning them for bigger things to come later in the year. [details]
Jizz on my face
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