By Scott Gilfoid: It looks like Showtime and HBO will be having competing fight cards on the June 22nd when WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi defends his title against Adrien Broner on Showtime, and former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. faces an opponent still to be determined on HBO on the same night.
According to Steve Kim, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer wants the June 22nd date for Malignaggi-Broner on Showtime, and he’s not going to budge from that date. If anyone is going to move from that date it’s going to have to be the Top Rank promoted Chavez Jr.
Earlier today it was announced that HBO will no longer be televising any of Golden Boy Promotions fighters on their network. Top Rank will be the promotional company that supplies HBO with most of their fights, which could be good or bad depending on how well you like to see a lot of rematches. That’s kind of what Top Rank is becoming known for recently with Manny Pacquiao fighting Juan Manuel Marquez over and over, and Brandon Rios facing Mike Alvarado.
If Arum is going to be stubborn about keeping Chavez Jr. on the June 22nd date to compete against Broner-Malignaggi, then he’s going to have to find a good opponent for Chavez Jr. because matching him against Matthew Macklin or Brian Vera, two of the names that has been mentioned for Chavez Jr’s June 22nd date, isn’t going to attract a lot of viewers away from the Broner vs. Malignaggi fight.
Vera is more of an ESPN2 type of fighter, and Macklin is completely unknown in the U.S expect with hardcore boxing fans. Broner vs. Malignaggi is the much better fight compared to Chavez Jr. against one of those guys, and Arum needs to seriously moving Chavez Jr’s fight to a week later if he wants to draw good ratings.
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