HBO loses Mayweather to Showtime/CBS

By Boxing News - 02/19/2013 - Comments

floyd4222By Chris Williams: HBO has got to be feeling the pain today at the news that their star, the biggest pay per view star in all of sports Floyd Mayweather Jr., has left them and signed a six-fight, 30 month deal with Showtime/CBS. Dan Rafael of ESPN is right; this has got to be the darkest day for HBO ever.

They lost Manny Pacquiao for one fight, and we saw what happened after that. But to lose an even bigger star in Mayweather, that’s going to be tough on HBO. They don’t have anyone to fill in the void that Mayweather Jr. has left.

Adrien Broner is one of HBO’s darlings right now, but he’s not ready to be promoted to pay-per-view fights, partly because of the poor match-making his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions are doing for him. But if they try and put Broner as a PPV fighter to help bring in revenue that they’re losing with Mayweather’s departure, it’s going to be a fail.

You don’t replace Mayweather with a Mayweather-clone and expect to get the same numbers right off the bat. If HBO wants Broner to be a star like Mayweather then they’re going to have to light a fire under Golden Boy to start putting Broner in with top fighters because he’s lagging behind where Mayweather was when he was 23.

The six-fight deal is a doable one for Mayweather as long as he doesn’t get pressured into fighting junior middleweights like Saul “Canelo”Alvarez, Austin Trout and Miguel Cotto [again]. A Canelo vs. Mayweather is okay as long as Canelo boils down to 147, and he agrees to a rehydration limit before stepping into the ring. Mayweather can’t be fighting a 170 pound fighter, and expecting to win.

Mayweather is going to start the six-fight contract with an easy one against the slow WBC interim welterweight champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero. This won’t be hard because Guerrero stands straight up is right there for Mayweather’s shots. It’s going to be a lot easier than Mayweather’s fight with Cotto.



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