By Dave Lahr: I can’t believe I sat through the entire 1st episode of HBO 24/7 Pacquiao/Margarito last night. Man, it was really boring. If I worked for HBO, I would have canned the director of the episode because it was nothing but wasted video. Most of the dull episode was spent on going over the mundane details of the Margarito hand wrap issue and basically beating into the ground. I seriously lost interest after 10 full minutes of them going over this garbage without stop. This isn’t how you sell a fight. If they want to drum up big pay per view numbers, rehashing Margarito’s hand wrap issues in detail isn’t going to help matters any. None of these guys had any charisma. The HBO director needed extract some drama, because it was almost entirely devoid of any real human emotion. It was like watching a science program on TV. Just totally boring.

I’m already purchasing the fight, but after listening to Margarito and Pacquiao talk about the issue for almost the entire episode, I was seriously losing interest in watching it. This is the kind of thing you want to touch on briefly and then move off the topic onto more positive aspects of the fight. You don’t want to shove the camera in the face of Margarito and let him drone on. It didn’t make me feel good about the fight watching Pacquiao say “Of course he knew [referring to Margarito knowing his hand wraps were loaded]. What do you think of us, stupid? ‘Oh coach, put my hand wrap on my hand. I’m going to close my eyes.’ Like that right? Common sense!”

There just wasn’t enough training footage in the episode. It wasn’t interesting to see Pacquiao filed in congress. That needed to be cut out and left on the editing room floor. I don’t mind 2 seconds of them covering this, but man they went over it way too long. That was seriously boring. I don’t care about Pacquiao running in some obscure run. That needed to be edited out, and about 90% of the interviews of Freddie Roach needed to be left on the editing room floor as well. He has a weird gleam in his eyes when he’s being interviewed, as if he likes being the center of attention too much. He’s not the story and I don’t want to see him yapping about 24/7 and saying “we” all the time when referring to what Pacquiao has done in the ring.

As far as Pacquiao goes, there needs to be less talking from him and more action with him sparring. I can barely understand him and it puts me to sleep watching him talk. There’s no drama. I want to see him roughing somebody up or giving someone a tongue lashing for not giving him what he wants. I want to see him acting like royalty. Pacquiao was smiling too much during the episode. The HBO producer needed to bring out Pacquiao’s dark side during the episode, so that we could see some variation to his personality. I’d have really liked to have seen Pacquiao battering one of his sparring partners into submission and leaving him a bloody mess. Now, that would be good entertainment. We needed blood, tears and wreckage. Instead, it was just a bunch of dull yapping about the hand wrap issue. Sometimes a producer has to force the emotion out of these characters. Pacquiao is too wooden, and Margarito smiles too much. I want menace, anger out of these guys.