By Raj Parmar: As the Floyd Mayweather Jr – Marcos Maidana rematch inches closer, the boxing landscape has become disarrayed at the highest levels. This past weekend, boxing fans loudly complained of the horrific mismatches taking place on the Danny Garcia-Rod Salka card on Showtime.
The venom in the air surrounding the card was not strictly coming from fans however, as tension flowed between the major power players in the sport of boxing as well.
Showtime Sports Executive Stephen Espinoza had harsh words for Golden Boy head Oscar De La Hoya on the weekend, ripping into him for his lack of presence during the promotion of the card. This comes as De La Hoya attempts to repair his company’s relationship with HBO, Showtime’s rival, which no doubt must bother Espinoza. Golden Boy fighter and legend Bernard Hopkins is returning to HBO in the fall after fighting exclusively on Showtime for a couple of years.
To add further fuel to the fire, HBO Sports President Ken Hershman recently stated that HBO Pay Per View can easily double the approximately 400K pay per view buys that Golden Boy fighter and Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez generated against Erislandy Lara on Showtime. Thus it can easily be seen there are strong forces at play behind the scenes in the sport right now, a chess match between the organizations that control boxing.
I believe that majority of the pieces will fall into place after the Mayweather-Maidana fight. De La Hoya is now fighting back and this may likely be the last fight that Golden Boy will promote with boxing’s biggest star Mayweather as a participant, as Floyd is very upset his friend Schaefer is no longer with Golden Boy and has applied for a promotional license in wake of Schaefer’s departure with Golden Boy.
Will all this behind the scenes fighting distract the parties involved from promoting the Mayweather-Maidana rematch to the fullest capability? It is already rumored that the first Mayweather-Maidana match generated less than desired pay per view buys, and that event had a stacked undercard featuring Amir Khan and Adrien Broner. With no major names announced for the undercard of the rematch and heavy tension going on between Showtime and Golden Boy, the promotion and resulting pay per view figures for the rematch could very likely be significantly worse than even what the first fight generated.
It is clear that Floyd is taking the rematch very seriously to prove to those who feel Maidana should have gotten the win (or at least a draw) that he is by far the superior fighter. However as he puts his head down and focuses only on the fight ahead, there may be moves developing behind the scenes that aim to shift the power structure in boxing and make HBO the top boxing network once again, with Golden Boy’s Canelo Alvarez getting the push as the new face of boxing and top pay per view star.
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