While HBO and Showtime ran competing fight cards this past weekend, some media members noticed the HBO show had much less Stateside press covering their event than usual. In an video interview caught by FightHype, Jim Lampley explains why that was and where he believes HBO currently sits in the boxing landscape.
On why there was a lot of international media at SuperFly 3 while most U.S. media were at the Porter-Garcia card in Brooklyn:
“I think that at the end of the day if two welterweights of prominence are fighting on the same night that the audience is going to pay more attention to the two welterweights of prominence than to 115-pound fighters. We at HBO have been loyal to these smaller guys .
“At the end of the day, without a glamour star like ‘Chocolatito’ on the card and without the electricity that Srisaket Sor Rungvisai brings, you don’t have the same thing. [Juan Francisco] Estrada is a good fighter, but he doesn’t bring the kind of electricity that Srisaket Sor Rungvisai brings into the ring. So this tripleheader without Sor Rungvisai — probably could’ve seen this coming in advance. Just wasn’t the same kind of crackling attraction as what we’ve had before.”
On where HBO stands as a platform for boxing with new entrants in the market and their seemingly dwindling commitment to boxing programming:
“HBO’s focus at this moment is very clear. We have Canelo Alvarez against Gennady Golovkin in the biggest fight of the year next Saturday night — the most important fight in the sport and the most important fight viewers can watch is the fight that we’re gonna cover next Saturday night. It promises to deliver a great deal of excitement. It might possibly set up a third fight.
“And then we now have lingering on the psychological outskirts of the whole Canelo vs. GGG rivalry, we’ve got this kid named Jaime Munguia who could turn out to be a factor in that division. We expect him at some point to become a middleweight. Wouldn’t shock me to one day see Munguia fight either or both Canelo Alvare and Gennady Golovkin. And that’s the core of our focus in boxing right now.”