The Boxing Bookie's Random Tuesday Rant

by John Chavez

The general sentiment amongst boxing fans right now is that the sport is irritating beyond belief. With the announcement of Pacquiao-Margarito instead of the fight the entire world has been waiting for, and the seeming indifference with Floyd Mayweather Jr. as to the fall out, boxing fans are scarily seeming indifferent to the sport as a whole. I know of quite a few boxing fans who at one point where excited about this Saturday's PPV card featuring a rematch to 2009's "Fight of the Year" in Diaz-Marquez II, who have vowed to no longer purchase anything boxing related for quite some time.

I hope that the backlash from the Pacquiao-Mayweather fallout doesn't affect the combatants of this Saturday as Juan Diaz and Juan Manuel Marquez actually deserve the consumers pay-per-view dollars. It's funny because I'm not necessarily thrilled that this rematch is taking place on PPV but after rewatching the first bout which has been replayed on HBO, it renews my appreciation for two guys who put it out there 100 percent on the line. Some fans will state that the card isn't worth it's price tag, I'd say that for this day and age, it's a fairly good card with a main event that features two proud, Mexican warriors who really put on quite a show the first time around.

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Apparently HBO Sport's head honcho, Ross Greenburg has come out with a statement reiterating what Top Rank's Bob Arum has been stating for the past several weeks. Greenburg states that he had been in the middle of the negotiations for Pacquiao-Mayweather as the messenger.

This completely contradicts the statements of both Richard Schaefer and Oscar De la Hoya who had only hours earlier reiterated the statements of Leonard Ellerbe that no negotiations had taken place for the fight.

Somebody might be lying... somebody might be telling the truth... in my opinion, everyone is twisting the truth as discussions are different than negotiations. What might be a negotiation between Arum/Greenburg/Haymon can be transmitted much different amongst the Haymon/GBP/Ellerbe/Mayweather circle. I just find it immensely hard to believe that no discussions for the fight had taken place and that it was all a complete smokescreen/farce to begin with.

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Please say it ain't so Ricky Hatton. I've read that he's renewed his license to compete within the ring once again. It's seemingly always the same saga with former prize-fighters, they just can't stay away from that type of limelight. I just hope Felix Trinidad and Oscar De la Hoya do not follow suit and possibly continuing to damage their legacies in the process.

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The WBC continues to make a mockery of itself should it sanction the Pacquiao-Margarito bout. I don't recall the last time it was so OBVIOUS that a sanctioning body was in the back pocket of a particular promoter. In this case, it is more than obvious that Top Rank is funneling some sort of "perks" into the crusty hands of the WBC in order to continuously get their fighter "Belt Fittings".

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Michael "Gordo" Marley is one of the last great boxing writers that connects eras past with the current slop of today. He's a must read crazed baboon that always has a chuckle to give.

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The betting line has recently opened for the Carl Froch-Arthur Abraham fight. The line-maker is slightly favoring Abraham at -165 with Froch sitting at +125. This is about as competitive as a bout can get on paper according to the analysis as well as the betting line. HBO should take note as 10-1 betting mismatches do not warrant the top dollar their price tag they dangle.

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I'm hoping that some of the fights that the fans want to see get made soon enough. The worse thing to happen to a sport is to continuously dangle the carrot in front of the fan base turning their fervor for the sweet science into anger and eventually indifference. Indifference can drive the popularity of boxing even lower than it currently is which will reflect in the TV ratings which will eventually affect the programming decisions. I've heard the argument time and time again... there's no way that HBO would drop it's boxing programming, it's much to valuable to let go of.

I remember hearing the same thing about the US economy and real estate market prior to it's current collapse. There has to be other reasons why boxing wouldn't get dropped by HBO other than the "too big to fail" reasoning.

If ratings drop to a level that deems it as ridiculously more profitable to enter other markets/programming, it'll happen just as Telefutura had deemed it more profitable to produce Spanish soap operas rather continue their boxing programming. Only until a sponsor stepped in to resurrect the boxing on that channel did it return to the television airwaves.

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Samuel Peter-Chris Arreola
Carl Froch-Arthur Abraham
James Kirkland-Alfredo Angulo
Manny Pacquiao-Marcos Maidana
Devon Alexander-Timothy Bradley
Michael Katsidis-Robert Guerrero
Roman Martinez-Celestino Caballero
Juan Manuel Lopez-Yuriorkis Gamboa
Fernando Montiel-Nonito Donaire

These are all of my top level "won't see the distance" fights. What other match-ups can you envision being an all-out brawl in which the winners are the boxing fans?

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Double IPA's are the beers of the summer... as well as winter and fall.


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