Pacquiao-Rios 24/7 episode 1 on HBO on November 9th

By Boxing News - 08/08/2013 - Comments

By Chris Williams: The November 23rd pay per view fight between Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) and Brandon Rios (31-1-1 23 KO’s) will be having an HBO 24/7 series starting on November 9th, according to Steve Kim. No word how many episodes HBO will be showing for Pacquiao/Rios, but you have to figure it’s going to be at least three with the dates being November 9th, 16th and 22nd.

The fight will be staged at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China. This is part of Top Rank’s efforts to open up China for their boxing cards. There’s still talk that Zou Shiming (2-0) will be in the co-feature bout.

If so, Bob Arum will have to try and find some other fighters to load up the undercard, because Shiming isn’t going to be a huge help in selling the Pacquiao-Rios fight on PPV to American fans.

Shiming has captured two Gold medals in the Olympics out of China, but he’s still an unknown with casual boxing fans in the U.S. Arum thinks he can make a star out of him in the U.S, so you can expect to see him on a lot of Top Rank’s highly visible PPV cards like this one.

What’s interesting about this HBO 24/7 series is that matches two fighters coming off of losses in Pacquiao and Rios. This has got to be a first for HBO in that department.

They’ve had 24/7 series where one of the fighters is coming off of a loss, but I don’t think they’ve ever had it were both guys were beat in their last fights. Pacquiao has lost his last two fights to Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley; whereas Rios is coming off a loss to Mike Alvarado in his last fight.

It’s going to be difficult to generate a lot of excitement for the Pacquiao-Rios fight, because the fight isn’t taking place in the U.S, the undercard might not be interesting, and both guys are coming into the fight with defeats. It’s hard to even understand how the fight is even PPV. To me, a fighter stops being a PPV fighter once he’s lost his last fight. With Pacquiao, he’s lost his last two fights.



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