By Allan Fox: The June 22nd fight between WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) and Adrien Broner (26-0, 22 KO’s) won’t be televised by HBO when the two fighters meet at the Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Instead, the fight will be aired by Showtime, according to Dan Rafael and Kevin Iole.
They’re reporting that HBO will no longer be televising Golden Boy Promotions fighters for some reason. They’ll focus on showing other fighters from other promotional companies like Top Rank instead.
This is a huge move for HBO because they’ve been building up the 23-year-old Broner by televising all of his fights in the past two years, and he could possibly become a huge pay-per-view star in the future. If Broner becomes boxing’s #1 fighter in the future, HBO may wish they were still televising Broner’s fights.
Rafael says “HBO is going to focus on guys like [Andre] Ward, [Gennady] Golovkin, [Tim] Bradley, [Nonito] Donaire, [Sergio] Martinez. It will be interesting to see if GB [Golden Boy Promotions], without HBO, can build Broner into a PPV attraction. If Broner-Malignaggi happens, it’ll be on Showtime.”
HBO will still have a lot of good fighters to show on their network, but it’s going to hurt big time with them losing Broner, and not being able to televise Golden Boy’s light welterweights like Danny Garcia, who was already having his fights shown on Showtime, Lamont Peterson, Amir Khan [also now shown on Showtime], and Lucas Matthysse.
The change probably won’t hurt Broner’s continuing rise to superstardom because it’s not as if HBO were putting on 24/7 episodes before his fights. They’ve basically just been televising his fights aside from one highlight episode on Broner in the past. Showtime can do the same thing, and Broner should be okay as long as he keeps winning.
What will make Broner a star is once he gets big named opponent in the ring and beats them convincingly in an exciting fight. Malignaggi is a good start, but it’s going to take a real big name and/or some really talented contenders before Broner becomes a PPV attraction.
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