Old Man Smell

Things are starting to look very, very rough for the house that Bob Arum built. Just less than a week ago, we were anticipating the announcement of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs HBO's own golden child Gennady Golovkin in what would have been an excellent fight. This week, it has been reported that Chavez has been courted by boxing's mega-broker Al Haymon and it looks like the young man likes what he sees.

As of this writing, Chavez is still under contract with Top Rank but it isn't hard to see that these are trying times for Bob Arum and the HBO regime who so heavily rely on his fleeting stable.

Chavez might be willing to either sit out or buy out his remaining eight months to partner up with Haymon. Their future star in the making Mikey Garcia is taking his grievances with his current employer to court, citing a violation of the Muhammad Ali act which will end with Garcia either leaving or missing significant time in the ring.

These developments have just come hot off of the reports that the Manny Pacquiao/Timothy Bradley rematch last weekend severely underperformed at the box-office selling only $7.8 million at the live gate, Pacquiao's lowest gate in four years.

The projected pay-per-view numbers are floating anywhere between 600-800k, which is also a tremendous disappointment for what was one of the biggest fights of the year at this point. Not to mention that the results from the Bradley fight continues a downward trend in Pacquiao's marketability as age and tougher matchmaking have taken their toll on their Filipino superstar.

Arum's long promotional career has included tons of strong-arming and clandestine business practices to keep fighters and revenue from being split as little as possible, but where Arum always found himself smarter than the fighters he employed in the past, this is a whole new game. There are very little places for old-timers and their old school practices anymore.

If a fighter wanted to fight any of his big name guys in the past, it had to come with either options or a contract altogther. Shane Mosley, Juan Manuel Marquez and Timothy Bradley all had to jump ship from their previous promoter in order for their fights with Pacquiao to take place. Chavez could not get his fight with Sergio Martinez two years ago unless he agreed to a contract extension.

Opportunities are no longer at Arum's feet anymore and his fighters are taking notice. Garcia saw a potential career-high payday go up in smoke when Arum put the kibbosh on a fight with Yuriorkis Gamboa, not wanting his fleeting former client to make a single cent from his pocket. Let's not even mention why we haven't gotten Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao to fight, but history will tell us who ultimately pulled the plug on that one time and time again.

One would have to imagine the state of HBO boxing if Showtime were to annex Garcia and Chavez much like they did Adonis Stevenson just a few months ago. HBO cannot possibly hope to compete with the quality of fighters making their way to Showtime with the ragtag bunch of fighters they have now.

In the course of the past year, HBO lost major pay per view and network draws like Adrien Broner, Bernard Hopkins, Saul Alvarez as well as Stevenson and Mayweather. They are in the process of losing their future in Garcia as well as the Golovkin/Chavez match that had designs to get Golovkin to superstar status.

The bleeding might continue even further in the coming weeks. Who does Ruslan Provodnikov fight after he crushes ho-hum Chris Algeri in June? Is Nonito Donaire content with decent paying mismatches for the rest of his career? How many fights do we get out of the Pacquiao/Bradley/Marquez round robin?

Unless HBO steps in and actively searches out to find new talent, they aren't going to have much of a boxing program in place. The network already issued an apology for the lack of quality undercards on their pay per view programs (though Roy Jones, in typical HBO commentator fashion, found a way to kiss butt on the air) and must not be happy with these recent developments.

In the long run, this changing of the guard will ultimately lead to much better competition and a new generation of fighters. Matchmaking will have to get more creative with the fighters at the network's disposal now more than ever and will break away from the showcase fight format. There won't be pay per view fights, there will have to be pay per view events to take their place.

All of these don't sound like things Arum and Top Rank are willing to do, but it'll be up to them to adapt. The business is changing, whether they like it or not.