By Jason Kim: ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas slammed HBO on Friday’s ESPN telecast for guaranteeing the loser of last week’s light welterweight fight between champions Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander a fight on their network and a huge $1.25 million payday.

What ultimately happened in that fight was that Alexander was cut from a couple of headbutts and instead of fighting through the pain and the blood, Alexander complained that his head stung and hurt from a head butt in the 10th. The fight was then stopped at that point by the referee.

Atlas had this to say about HBO’s decision to give Alexander, the loser, another shot on their network: “I think that’s absurd. I don’t understand what people at HBO, and I guess they’re smarter than me, but I don’t understand what the big shots, there are doing when they give something in the contract that tells the fight that if you lose, you’re going to get a million dollar fight on our network, and another fight in our network if you lose. I’ve never heard of something like that. To me, it’s not good business sense. To me, again, they’re smarter than me, but it doesn’t make sense. Would you tell your children that it you don’t clean up your room, you’re still going to get your allowance? Do you think those shirts would be picked up off the floor? Again, I’m confused with the big shots at HBO making a deal with a fighter, saying ‘You lose, don’t worry about it. You’ll be back on air. You’ll get plenty of money.”

Atlas has a point. HBO shouldn’t have guaranteed the loser to be able to fight on their network because it set up a situation where Alexander, the loser, didn’t have to fight through the pain and was still able to get a shot to fight again with HBO. In hindsight, it seems like a bad move because Alexander looked poor in that fight and also looked poor in his previous fight against Andriy Kotelnik. Now HBO will be paying him big money for a fight that may turn out to be just as disappointing as Alexander’s fights with Bradley and Kotelnik.