Is Golden Boy stacking the Marquez-Diaz undercard to stay in good with HBO?

By Boxing News - 07/02/2010 - Comments

By Eric Thomas: You have to wonder why Golden Boy Promotions all of sudden put together and outstanding July 31st. The card has Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Juan Diaz in the main event, and a number other exciting fights on the undercard. In almost every case, the undercard fights could serve either as a main event fight or at the minimum the co-main event. The following fights are on the card: Daniel Jacobs vs. Dmitri Pirog, Joel Casamayor vs. Roberto Guerrero, Jorge Linares vs. Rocky Juarez, and John Paul Mendy vs. Sakio Bika. These are all outstanding fights, and it’s completely out of the norm, in these times, for a promotional company to put on a card as good as this.

Apparently, Golden Boy won’t be making money on this fight and is putting together the card as a long term goal of there’s. I just wonder if this is a move on Golden Boy Promotions to stay in good with HBO, so that their fighters can keep being shown on the network on a regular basis. If this is the idea behind it, then I think it’s smart move, because it never hurts to please the network that’s showing your fighters.

At the same time, it could be that Golden Boy Promotions is trying to set themselves apart from promoters like Top Rank, for one, by not scrimping on the undercard. Some of Top Rank’s recent undercard fights have been less than thrilling match-ups. But Golden Boy has been guilty of putting together cards with boring undercards as well. It would be great if this is a new move on Golden Boy’s part to turn over a new leaf by giving the boxing fans what they want to see in terms of fully packed cards.

The UFC has been doing this for long time now, putting awesome undercards with exciting match-ups from top to bottom. If Golden Boy following their lead in order to set themselves apart as the Golden promotional company, then I think it’s a really smart move. However, I suspect that this could be just a one-time thing aimed at a hidden goal that they might have. If they want to please HBO, then they have to continue to put together exciting cards like this in the future to show that they’re the best at working hard to please the fans. With the economy being as bad as it is, it would be a breath of fresh air if Golden Boy was trying to give boxing fans the most bang for their hard-earned money.



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