REMOTE CONTROL: Boxing’s pay per view turns into pay per phooey
By Bill Taaffe
Jan. 30, 2007
Just the other day, Larry Merchant, HBO’s boxing commentator and resident philosopher, all but bit the hand that feeds him.
Merchant, who can be incisive, whimsical or blunt depending upon his mood, had finished working the network’s Jan. 20 “World Championship Boxing” card. It featured Jose Luis Castillo against a no-account fighter from Cameroon and Ricky Hatton against an “opponent” in name only.
“I have to confess that coming to the fights tonight I found myself constantly thinking, Why am I not coming to see Hatton fight Castillo?” Merchant said on the air. “Hatton-Castillo is the attraction, but that’s not the boxing business. This was a ‘business’ (fight) card.”
Attaboy, Larry! Go get ‘em!
Merchant was striking at the heart of the biggest problem in current-day TV boxing. HBO traditionally lusts for huge pay-per-view fights, for which it can charge $49.95 or $54.95 a pop. But to get those bouts it too often has to do “business” with promoters. It first has to give the Bob Arums and Don Kings of the world a few paydays their fighters can fill. Only then can the big event be arranged.
Thus it was that on Jan. 20, when Merchant and viewers really wanted to see Hatton and Castillo in what promises to be a furious junior welterweight bout, they saw two other fights instead.
In the first, Castillo outpointed Hermann Ngoudjo of Cameroon in a lackluster affair. (How on earth does Arum find a Ngoudjo?) The second pitted Hatton against one Juan Urango of Colombia. The most remarkable part of that bout came when Urango delusionally raised his arms above his head in supposed victory at the end of half the rounds.
Such is the price of “business:” lackluster bouts.
Here’s how it works in practice: A network has vast numbers of hours to fill. So it goes to a promoter and signs exclusive multifight contracts with his fighters. The promoter then matches a guy against weak opponents, knowing that the big day for his boy is a few fights down the line.
Unh-unh.
What the network should be saying is “Bring me good fighters and I’ll sign them for a specific fight on a certain date, period.” That way the buck stops with the network, not the promoter.
HBO has become the 800-pound gorilla in this, paying $3 million to $5 million for a regular title fight and as much as $40 million to $60 million for a pay-per-view one. HBO says it is decreasing the number of pay-per-view fights it carries annually and has only two scheduled for 2007. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, at least one premium network — Showtime — seems to have learned its lesson. For every dollar HBO spends on fights, Showtime pays about 20 to 40 cents. Yet its matches in the past few years have been easily as competitive as HBO’s, if not more so. ESPN2 spends a nickel or less on the dollar for its series of club-level fights on “Friday Night Fights.”
Frankly, I find boxing on Showtime and even ESPN2 often as watchable as that on HBO. Good boxing is compelling. It’s about competition, matchups and styles, not about the avalanche of titles awarded by the alphabet-soup sanctioning bodies.
And a word about boxing’s announcers: HBO rules the roost in this department. Jim Lampley runs rings around Showtime’s Steve Albert, in my book. And Merchant, whose energy level seems to have declined in recent years, remains insightful.
Merchant loves to play the old sage. Referring to Urango’s nutty celebrating in the Hatton fight, he said, “A fighter who judges his own fight is like a client who acts as his own lawyer.” What was this, the Book of Proverbs, According to Larry?
Back in the Dark Ages, Brent Musburger used to preside over “The NFL Today” and was so hyper each Sunday after drinking 15 cups of coffee that he seemed to be ready for liftoff. His modern-day equivalent is Max Kellerman on HBO’s “Boxing After Dark.” Slow down, Max. You’re on TV, not selling them on the street.
