Comments Thread For: Arum: I Had No Choice but to Take April 22 Card to Pay-Per-View

[Butch.McRae]

HBO'S budget has definitely fallen HARD!

Wouldn't be surprised if they got slashed to less than $20 million annually. Wouldn't be surprised at all.

Putting more money into their original content. Can't afford to fool around with boxing with Netflix at their heels. HBOgo is their focus

(And for those that don't realize it, HBO and Showtime are different in structure; so Showtime's budget and needs are a little different. CBS wants to compete with FOX and that UFC content.)

[snoopymiller]

Putting more money into their original content. Can't afford to fool around with boxing with Netflix at their heels. HBOgo is their focus

(And for those that don't realize it, HBO and Showtime are different in structure; so Showtime's budget and needs are a little different. CBS wants to compete with FOX and that UFC content.)

Good point! Yeah many folks aren't aware that boxing doesn't make HBO much money at all.

Very little reason to keep it around as the only sport they showcase.

[BoxingIsGreat]

Sucks for Arum. Because Valdez, Magdaleno, Ramirez, and Stevenson should be put on HBO or on a regular network.

Why isn't Top Rank getting the same business as Golden Boy Promotions on HBO yet has more established talent then them? Makes no sense.

Again if you can't get Valdez, Ramirez, or Magdaleno on regular HBO why not use the HBO Latino platform for them?

Bob Arum needs to find a network to work with the same as Golden Boy Promotions did to showcase their non speaking Spanish talent and to compete with PBC. Plain and Simple

For example the USA Network use to do fights why not try that avenue?

Arum pissed off Peter Nelson of HBO in an interview a couple of years ago. To paraphrase, if I remember correctly, Arum basically said Nelson could **** off if he didn't like Arum's line-ups (cards).

I guess it came back to bite him in the pocket!

[Aztekkas]

Fluck it... I'm buying.

[Scipio2009]

Bob should loosen the purse strings & buy airtime. Ramirez and Valdez would do well on national TV.

This is a great card so I am gladly going to pay that to be there live but shame on tr for pricing this fight after what pbc has been giving us.

No one trusts their airtime to Bob Arum: Time Warner put their necks out with the TruTv deal, and all Arum did was **** them with **** fights.

[killakali]

This card is full of mismatches and one decent fight. Berto-Porter is an eliminator. Winner fights Thurman or Thurman unifies with the winner of Brook/Spence. The fight means something. Marriaga-Valdez is a decent fight. But it goes nowhere. He's not going to unify against LSC. He's not going to fight Frampton, Mares, or Gary Russell Jr. His next fight will be another showcase fight. Zurdo Bursack is a trash fight. Magdalaneo vs. Dos Santos is a trash fight. Like I told you earlier. This isn't the original card HBO turned down. The original card was better and they turned it down for under a million dollars. This card is not worth PPV. Even Arum admits it in the article. He's trying to keep them active while not taking to much of a financial hit.

what do you mean eliminator? It is a has been fight. Thurman's mandatory is Lamont Peterson. It means the same as a Bradley-Vargas rematch. Bradley is ranked #1 WBO.

[Kigali]

This card is full of mismatches and one decent fight. Berto-Porter is an eliminator. Winner fights Thurman or Thurman unifies with the winner of Brook/Spence. The fight means something. Marriaga-Valdez is a decent fight. But it goes nowhere. He's not going to unify against LSC. He's not going to fight Frampton, Mares, or Gary Russell Jr. His next fight will be another showcase fight. Zurdo Bursack is a trash fight. Magdalaneo vs. Dos Santos is a trash fight. Like I told you earlier. This isn't the original card HBO turned down. The original card was better and they turned it down for under a million dollars. This card is not worth PPV. Even Arum admits it in the article. He's trying to keep them active while not taking to much of a financial hit.

I hope Shakur Stevenson is paying attention.

[Mitchell Kane]

Valdez-Marriagga isn't that bad, and the Stevenson debut has some interest...but the Ramirez opponent hurts the overall appeal of this card.

Ramirez's injury really set him back...and significantly set back Top Rank, as well.

[Mitchell Kane]

Arum has admitted he doesn't expect this fight to make money...

?b>Obviously we’re not doing this to make money. If you told me, ‘Bob, I have a way for you to break even on this show,?I’d give you a commission.?(OK, that said, I’m on it.)

Regarding where this all leaves Top Rank, Steve Kim wrote that Arum has something in the works.

No details yet, but Arum says he has "a plan" and "announcements" will be made...at the same time talking about the limits of premium networks....so it would seem that Top Rank is trying to come up with something outside of HBO.

“I’ve been in boxing ?this is 51 years ?and I tell you this: That the next 10 years will be the biggest for boxing during my entire connection with the sport,?said Arum, who’s still very spry in his mid-80s. “I’m not going to get into it but I’m telling you ?when the announcements are made, you’ll understand.?

?b>Well, I have a plan but I’m not able to reveal the plan,?Arum hinted.

Kim speculates what that could be....

While he didn’t want to get into details over what Top Rank has in store, logic would dictate that it would involve modern technology, namely the ability to stream content over such devices as mobile phones and tablets. There is more and more cord-cutting taking place with cable/satellite television and how people are now watching television is evolving.

“I mean, you can blame somebody else but you’ve got to blame yourself. See, I remember when fighters were much more relevant, when they were performing on a regular basis on over-the-air networks and, then HBO came along and offered us twice the money ?or sometimes more ?to go to premium networks and over-the-air networks found that the premium networks were getting all the good fights. So they dropped out because they weren’t getting good fights and it was our fault because we didn’t have the foresight to realize that, by going to the premium networks, we were limiting our market.?

?b>Also exposure because an over-the-air network like CBS had a hundred million homes and an HBO had barely thirty million,?pointed out Arum, who, for years, has promoted pay-per-view cards such as “Latin Fury?and “Pinoy Power?to fill in the gaps when an HBO or Showtime did not have the desire or budget for his fights.

Over the last couple of years, Golden Boy Promotions has begun to stream fight cards and has its own in-house production crew to create content that is pushed on various social media platforms and YouTube (which is also now being utilized to stream cards live).

?b>I know what we have to do and what we’re doing. We’re doing a feature now on Shakur and I really believe, within three or four months, the whole future of boxing will change appreciably,?stated Arum, on Friday. “And part of that is the necessity to take your athletes and have people understand who they are, so they can identify with (them). If you have faceless guys, nobody can identify with them.?

[KnickTillDeaTh]

what do you mean eliminator? It is a has been fight. Thurman's mandatory is Lamont Peterson. It means the same as a Bradley-Vargas rematch. Bradley is ranked #1 WBO.

Peterson is mandatory to the WBA title. Porter vs. Berto was elivated to title eliminator by the WBC, which means the winner of that fight becomes the mandatory to the WBC title. They haven't made an announcement on what that does for Amir Khan who was the mandatory, although it was reported that Khan would lose his WBC mandatory slot if he fought Pac. Still, there has been no word on that just yet.