re: Boxing on NBC

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Ok so if you were an HBO executive, you would be perfectly happy with cutting your boxing budget by almost 25% just so you could have enough money in the pot to pay Andre Berto $1 million twice/year so he could fight trash from Mexico City like Freddy Hernandez? Are you f*cking kidding me?

Haymon paid Danny Garcia almost $1 million to fight a dude two weight classes BELOW him and WASN'T EVEN RANKED in his class. Are you f*cking kidding me?

Sure, if you are people like Andre Berto, Danny Garcia, Adrien Broner, Keith Thurman, etc. it's great that you get paid a shite load of money to fight alcoholics, landscapers, construction workers, etc. But are you telling me that premium cable subscribers should be happy to see these supposedly elite fighters fighting trash time after time? Am I supposed to just ignore that fact and just be happy that they are getting paid? F*ck that, man, I'm a fan and I wanna see FIGHTS, not overpaid "elite" fighters fighting garbage over and over again.

Haymon brought that garbage to HBO and they kicked him out. Now you're seeing Showtime doing the same thing now....they keep broadcasting these Haymon specials where it's all Haymon A-sides vs. someone you've never heard of.


Can you imagine the New England Patriots playing Tulane, ULL, Amite High School, etc every week? That would be Al Haymon's vision if he were running an NFL team. He wouldn't dare let his Patriots play an actual NFL team

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Well, like you said, Haymon is a smart businessman. I think what he's trying to implement would ultimately be good for boxing. But it's not a finished product, and I don't think it every will be. As it stands right now, he's got this huge stack of chips but only making the minimum bet, and that's bad for boxing.

Say Haymon had all of the best fighters in his stable. He could put on all of the fights that everyone wants to see because he's going to profit either way. He wants to create the UFC version of boxing, but you need all of the best talent to do that. Until that happens, being the smart businessman as you mentioned, he knows that his first responsibility is to his fighter, to keep them upright and pristine, not to make the best possible match. If he puts one of his fighters in against Triple G and that fighter gets smashed, that's a net loss for him. What I think Haymon wants to do is to bearhug the talent pool into submission, so that they become Haymon guys. Once he has all of the fighters, sure let's give the fans what they want because he'll profit either way.

I know this doesn't make anyone feel any better, but I don't think Haymon is the problem with boxing, he's just a symptom. Too many people have their hands in the pot, Haymon's just one of them. They're all just looking for their own short-term interests and not the long-term interests of the sport.