Don't Sleep on HBO Boxing Just Yet in Its Heavyweight Battle with Showtime

The headlines suggest that not only has Showtime pulled ahead in its premium cable boxing battle with longtime rival HBO, but the fight has become so one-sided that the entity once hailed as the “Network of Champions” is but a weekend or two from receiving last rites.

And while proclamations like that might swerve a mile or two past hyperbolic, there’s little legitimate doubt that another series of blows with the impact of this past Saturday’s would be less than ideal for president of HBO Sports, Ken Hershman.

In case you hadn’t heard, the Showtime effort from San Antonio sent normally equable reporters sprinting after thesauruses to see who’d be first to deem the three-bout show the most powerfully vivid and breathtakingly violent television event they’d ever witnessed.

As for the HBO broadcast from China—a barely masqueraded Top Rank infomercial with better chyrons—it’s a bad sign when the high point isn’t the action in the ring but the panning of the crowd for glimpses of the fighters (Rios, Garcia, Pacquiao) we’d rather be watching.

And it’s not as if the imminent future changes too much.

While Showtime figures to score big with the year’s next big pay-per-view event come mid-September in Las Vegas, the boys on the Bob Arum side of the dial won’t haul out the heavy artillery until November, when the aforementioned Pacquiao and Rios get together for real back in Macau.

Assuming Pacquiao is remotely close to the pound-for-pound level he was perceived to be at this time last year, he’ll win an interesting fight, look very good doing it and instantly get the HBO/Showtime skirmish tipped back onto a more competitive—if not precisely equal—axis.

The problem in the meantime is, well...the meantime.

Given the mojo of its last few shows before Saturday—Matthysse vs. Peterson, Maidana vs. Lopez and Broner vs. Malignaggi—it’s starting to feel as if anything the Stephen Espinoza-led and Oscar De La Hoya-fed boxing enterprise assembles will instantly yield “(Something) of the Year” material.

Few, in fact, would have been blamed for forecasting the Texas event as little more than separate victory laps for house fighters against accomplished but beatable foes. Instead, it turned into a three-tiered drama in which each favorite bled, two of them trailed and one of them lost.

Golden Boy’s Abner Mares and Jhonny Gonzalez get the next crack at breathless adulation come August 24. They’ll meet for the WBC featherweight belt that Mares won in compelling style while whetting appetites beneath the Mayweather vs. Guerrero main event three months ago.

And speaking of Mayweather undercards, Espinoza/Golden Boy got another enormous perception boost with word that Matthysse and Danny Garcia—the world’s premier 140-pounders—will provide the final pre-entrée dish before Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez annex the MGM Grand.

Instantly, the $65/$75 PPV price tag went from felony to bargain. And the chance that the buy rate will at least sniff the magic two million threshold crossed by Oscar and Floyd went from maybe to probably.

Even the most optimistic of Lampleyites have to be thinking, “Sheesh, it’s been a rough few months.”

But if anyone’s expecting a concession speech anytime soon, don’t hold your breath. Because, recent skid or not, it’s not as if the HBO cupboard is completely bare.

It returns to the kitchen on August 17—a week before Mares vs. Gonzalez—with a three-bout card. There's potential for breakout star creation in the form of Sergey Kovalev, a 30-year-old Russian light heavy with a nine-KO win streak during which he’s averaged just three rounds apiece.

Following “The Crusher” in Atlantic City that night is IBF middleweight champion Daniel Geale, a slick once-beaten Australian who’d be the most genuine down-the-road test (not named Martinez) for the network’s most prized existing 160-pound possession—Gennady Golovkin.

Another chatted-about foe for “Triple-G,” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., is back three weeks later on Sept. 7 to revive a flagging career that not long ago had him in the very spot Golovkin now occupies—one heartbeat away from replacing Pacquiao as the network’s Saturday night czar.

And in the last show before the Pacquiao hiatus ends, HBO will loosen up its PPV arm with the man primarily responsible for his exit, Juan Manuel Marquez. He faces another fighter whom at least two people think beat Manny in 2012, welterweight champ Timothy Bradley.

Given that sort of lineup—not to mention running deals with proven commodities like Andre Ward and Nonito Donaire—rumors of HBO’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

In fact, toss in a tight decision in one upcoming fight or a stirring rally in another, and suddenly the playing field is level again.

Of course, if all else fails...maybe Hershman can just cancel his cable service.