De La Hoya-Pacquiao Might Be A Hard Sell After All

Posted by Dan Rafael
The return of your random thoughts
With the economy in the toilet, it's pretty easy for fight fans to save their money and forgo an expensive pay-per-view card. It's a lot easier to stick to other sports and television programming that is free for your Saturday night entertainment.
That's what promoters Golden Boy and Top Rank face as they try to sell the Dec. 6 Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao HBO PPV fight at a time when most folks are more concerned with buying basic necessitates than a boxing match.
When the fight was first made, I figured it was a lock for 1.5 million buys. Now, with the economy in such bad shape, it has many in the industry wondering if it will come close to that kind of number -- a number that would make it the second-biggest selling non-heavyweight PPV ever behind only Floyd Mayweather vs. De La Hoya.
Besides a sour economy, it doesn't help that the fight has a stiff $54.95 price tag, which is, frankly, too much. There are also countless people willing to either steal the fight off one of the numerous streams that are available on Internet or simply wait a week to watch HBO's replay.
Top Rank's Bob Arum, who promotes Pacquiao and says he's on the hook for about $11 million in guaranteed money to him, is one of those who is a bit worried.
'I'm sitting here biting my nails on a fight that I thought was a slam dunk,' Arum told me the other day. 'I won't get crushed, but all I want to do is pull this fight out.'
One of the ways I believe the promoters could gain some goodwill and help their cause is to cut the price of the pay-per-view. Instead of $54.95 -- the price for only the most expensive pay-per-views -- how about knocking a few bucks off? Like De La Hoya, Pacquiao and the promoters won't be able to survive with a few less dollars?
Imagine the positive publicity they could gain if they came out with this sort of statement: 'We understand times are tough. They are tough for a lot of us. So we're going to do our small part to make things more affordable. We're cutting the price of this great fight to $44.95 because you deserve a break. We want to thank you for all of your years of loyal support for our companies and fighters. We hope you appreciate it and we hope you enjoy the fight.'
I can dream can't I?
I enjoyed HBO's 'Calzaghe/Jones 24/7' quite a bit during the buildup to Joe Calzaghe's dominant victory last week over Roy Jones Jr. How cool was it that Jones' hotel suite had the perfect view of Times Square in New York and that HBO's producers were able to capture the historic moment of celebration when Barack Obama won the presidential election? They were in the right place at the right time and that moment added historic perspective to a tremendous final episode.
Speaking of '24/7,' I am very much looking forward to Sunday's debut (HBO, 8:30 p.m. ET/PT) of the four-part 'De La Hoya/Pacquiao 24/7.' It will undoubtedly be another terrific series. I only lament that there won't be any involvement from Floyd Mayweather Sr. or Roger Mayweather, both of whom were so much fun to watch in previous installments.
I have to say that the undercard for Calzaghe-Jones was appalling. Frankly, I think it was the worst HBO PPV undercard ever, and I have watched a lot of bad undercards. None of the fights were compelling on paper and none of them were compelling once the bell rang. If you're going to charge consumers $49.95 I do not think it is unreasonable to expect value for your money, especially in this economic climate. I do not think it is unreasonable that at least one of the fights on the telecast ought to be worthy of being the co-feature to the main event if it was a regular HBO fight. In the case of Calzaghe-Jones, HBO would never have put any of the three undercard bouts on the network in a million years. That's how weak they were. Zab Judah vs. Ernest Johnson would have been acceptable as the opener of the pay-per-view, but not as the co-feature. The other two bouts, Frankie Figueroa vs. Emanuel Augustus and Dmitriy Salita vs. Derrick Campos, were glorified club fights.
On the Calzaghe-Jones undercard, but not on the broadcast, super middleweight prospect Daniel Jacobs smashed Jimmy Campbell over three lopsided rounds. Campbell is never going to win a world title or be anything more in boxing than an opponent, but he's a good guy. Campbell went into Jacob's dressing room at Madison Square Garden to congratulate him after the fight and noticed that Jacobs was wearing white gym socks with his dark suit. Turns out that Jacobs had forgotten to bring a pair of dress socks. So Campbell ran back to his dressing room and returned with an extra pair of dark socks and gave them to Jacobs. That's class.
Arthur Abraham is darn good. His latest victory, an expected beat down of Raul Marquez, came as no surprise. Abraham is so strong and determined and he takes such a good shot that he looks unstoppable at times. I really want to see him and Kelly Pavlik fight next year.
I've had a chance to view the complete fight between Joel 'Love Child' Julio and junior middleweight titlist Sergei Dzindziruk from Germany. It was a good fight and Julio had his chances, especially early, but Dzindziruk deserved the victory, although I thought it should have been a little closer than the official scores. Hate to say to I told you so, but Julio never should have taken the fight, the reasons for which were outlined in detail in a prior blog. Hopefully, Julio at least learned something from the fight and can make another run. He's only 23.
Here's a classic example of why the sanctioning organizations are a pathetic joke and why fight fans, TV networks and many of my less educated fellow media members should try to ignore them as much as possible. Dzindziruk is the WBO's junior middleweight titleholder. He is healthy and just made a mandatory defense against Julio on Nov. 1. Yet, for no apparent reason, the WBO has sanctioned a Nov. 29 bout for an interim title between Paul Williams and union jack dress Verno Phillips. There is no good reason why Williams-Phillips should be for an interim title. The WBO, of course, probably doesn't see it that way. All it sees is the chance to make a few extra bucks on the sanctioning fees.
You want more alphabet nonsense? At the WBC's recently completed annual convention in Chengdu, China, Jose Sulaiman was re-elected to another four-year term as the alphabet organization's president. Sulaiman, who has been in office for more than 30 years, was elected unanimously. There's a shocker. Doesn't it sound like one of those phony elections in a country where a dictator wins a supposed open election with 100 percent of the vote?
Andrew Golota quit after the first round of his fight last week against Ray Austin. Rarely do I ever question the heart of a fighter because it's tough just to get in the ring in the first place, but Golota has the heart the size of a pea. He's made a career of quitting. Hopefully, this is the end for him now at age 40.
If you're a serious fight fan (and if you read my blog you probably are) then you really need to make sure you watch next Friday's Steve Molitor-Celestino Caballero junior featherweight unification bout on Showtime's 'ShoBox.' I've said it before and I will say it again, I love when Showtime picks up these sort of important fights that don't necessarily involve big names. These are the kind of fights that can help the winner become a bigger name.
In the spring of 2007, one of the hottest fights to be made was between Vic Darchinyan and bandage dress Jorge Arce, two fighters with all-action styles and big mouths. But the never-ending feud between their promoters, Gary Shaw and Top Rank's Arum, made the fight almost impossible to make. Then both fighters got beat. Darchinyan was brutally knocked out by Nonito Donaire and sailor dress Cristian Mijares outboxed Arce with ease. But since then, Darchinyan has re-established himself with a big knockout of Mijares to become the junior bantamweight champion while Arce has won five in a row and claimed an interim belt to become one of Darchinyan's mandatory challengers. Now is the time for the promoters to bury the hatchet and revive the fight before one of them gets bumped off again.
Which is tougher, boxing or politics? I bet heavyweight Joe Mesi would say politics. As a fighter, Mesi is 36-0. In political races, the Democrat is 0-1 after losing his race to win a seat in the New York state senate.
DVD pick of the week: It wasn't a memorable fight but it was important to me and my career, so I unearthed it after it dawned on me recently that it had been 10 years since the fight. On Halloween night -- Oct. 31, 1998 -- Naseem Hamed methodically outpointed Wayne McCullough to retain the featherweight championship at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. What's the big deal you ask about this forgettable match? Forgettable to most, perhaps, but to me it was huge and I will never forget it. I had covered some smaller fight cards in my early newspaper jobs, but Hamed-McCullough was the first HBO card I ever covered and the first one I ever covered for USA TODAY, huge milestones in my life. Since then, I've covered more well in excess of 100 HBO cardsmoved on to the greener pastures of ESPN, but Hamed-McCullough will always be special to me.


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