HBO's challenge: Make compelling fights
If Ken Hershman can deliver one small message to boxers who aspire to fight on his network, his hiring Thursday as the new president of HBO Sports will be a resounding success.
The HBO Sports dogma during the Hershman regime needs to be simple: Fight your way onto the network and fight to remain on the network.
Period. End of story.
There should be no appearances because you've signed with a powerful manager or an influential promoter. The standard by which a potential fight should be judged is whether it will make a compelling match on television.
If Hershman pursues that philosophy and doesn't grant most favored nation status to any promoter or manager like the previous regime did, then this hire will be a smash hit. There is cause for optimism because during the time Hershman was executive vice president and general manager at Showtime, Showtime frequently put on better fights than HBO despite having a fraction of its budget.
Hershman, who begins at HBO on Jan. 9, now has a big budget and he automatically becomes boxing's most powerful player because of it.
His task is to get HBO Sports back to the era where fans and media regarded bouts as significant simply by virtue of the fact that they were on HBO. That is no longer the case and has played a big role in the sport's decline.
In September, HBO put elite featherweight prospect Gary Russell Jr. on the air against an inept and unknown opponent in an eight-round bout. The bout had originally been scheduled as a 10-rounder, but was changed to eight at the request of Russell manager Al Haymon because Russell had a sore hand.
Russell is an intriguing prospect with the potential to become one of the best fighters in the business. He's not there yet, but there is no problem putting him on during his developmental years if he's ready to fight quality opposition. But HBO foisted a tune-up bout upon its subscribers because of the influence Haymon wields.
The manager's influence at HBO has been so strong that many have jokingly dubbed HBO the Haymon Boxing Organization.
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Haymon deserves influence because he manages or advises many of the sport's top fighters, most notably Floyd Mayweather Jr. Scott Boras is similarly powerful as a baseball agent because he represents a slew of the game's best players. Yet, you don't see, say, the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels playing on national television simply because they have a couple of Boras clients on the roster.
That, though, is what has happened for far too long at HBO, and Hershman needs to find a way to make that stop.
Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions are going to get the most dates on HBO because they're the biggest, and best, promoters in the sport and they have the best fighters under contract.
That said, the output deal that the previous regime at HBO Sports made with Golden Boy was disastrous from a fan standpoint. It led to far fewer significant fights and too many one-sided matches where the outcome was predictable.
The 30-something million subscribers who pay the $12.95 or so a month to get HBO are who Hershman needs to worry about and cater to, not a boxing promoter. The door should be open to any promoter who can deliver a top-level fight.
Putting on competitive, evenly matched fights is the most important thing Hershman can do, but he needs to do more to help boxing regain its significance at the network and in the minds of its viewers. He ought to consider a weekly, or bi-weekly, magazine show that covers the news, profiles fighters and debates hot topics in the sport.
Hershman should look to add a pre-fight and a post-fight show in order to grow the fan base. If HBO acts as if boxing is important, its subscribers will, too. And when HBO begins to devote more resources to boxing – and not simply dollars to buy fights – the media will notice and increase its coverage of the sport.
HBO needs to make room for the lighter weight fighters, because they almost always produce the best fights. In the last 14 years, not one of Ring's picks for Fight of the Year has been contested at a division higher than super lightweight. The last Ring pick for Fight of the Year that was fought at a higher weight came in 1996, when Evander Holyfield stopped Mike Tyson in the 11th round of their first meeting.
Since then, Ring's Fight of the Year has been fought at, in order, super featherweight, lightweight, featherweight, super bantamweight, super lightweight three times in a row, super featherweight, lightweight, super bantamweight three times in a row, lightweight and flyweight.
Significantly, no welterweights, middleweights, or heavyweights are on that list.
Given that there aren't many intriguing fights at heavyweight, get out of the heavyweight business for the time being. When there is a crop of heavyweights worth televising, go for it.
Only time will tell whether Richard Plepler and Michael Lombardo, the HBO executives who hired him, will give Hershman the freedom and leverage to do the job the way he sees fit.
There should be no sacred cows any more.
The only thing that matters should be making the kinds of fights that compel HBO subscribers to pick up the telephone, call a friend and say, "Holy crap! Did you just see that?"
Anything else won't do and won't be good enough.
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