HBO's Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Emanuel Steward weigh in on the September 18 HBO pay-per-view fight between Shane Mosley and Sergio Mora:
Now that that's out of the way, let's address a question many probably have right now.
Why is HBO wasting money that could have gone to something better on this fight, and more specifically, why are they allowing themselves to be put into a position where they're openly supporting this lame duck pay-per-view? I thought this was being distributed by HBO, but not produced by the company, and apparently that's not the case. Past examples of Golden Boy fights distributed by HBO but not produced by them are Casamayor-Marquez (which was worthwhile) and Hopkins-Jones II (which was not). But this is a full-on HBO event.
I don't mean to disrespect the fighters at all. I am a huge Shane Mosley fan, and I respect Mora's skills. So what I figure is that Golden Boy simply put together too large of a card fit for TV, and PPV was the only option. With four fights that aren't bad -- Mosley-Mora, Ortiz-Harris, Alvarez-Baldomir, Ponce de Leon-Escalante -- there's just no room for this on a Saturday night on HBO. Those are four fights that Golden Boy wants on TV, packed onto one card. So it has to go to PPV, basically. The choice to buy it is yours, but with the way the entire card is set up, there's no way this was ever going to be on HBO or any other non-PPV outlet.
Now, I do have my doubts that this is going to sell very well at all, and I think they might be lucky if they manage the 200,000 that Marquez-Diaz II pulled in. They've got to be banking on Saul Alvarez to help the buyrate, as he's arguably the most exciting young Mexican star in the sport.
But hey, I'm ordering it. I'll admit that I like the overall card enough for a Saturday night at home watching boxing, particularly the featherweight fight between Daniel Ponce de Leon and Antonio Escalante, and I think Vivian Harris might have more for Victor Ortiz than Ortiz and Golden Boy are counting on. They've hooked me in with quantity over great quality, more or less -- are they going to get you, too?