HBO'S DISGUSTING COVERAGE OF DE LA HOYA V. MAYWEATHER
Written by Robert Littal http://www.blacksportsonline.com
Before I start let me emphasize this point, this article hasn’t nothing to do with Oscar De La Hoya. I thought Oscar fought well and I have absolutely no ill feelings towards his performance or his behavior throughout the whole promotion of the fight. With that being said HBO’s coverage of the fight and absolute bias and dislike towards Floyd Mayweather made me sick to my stomach.
Just last week I had to sit through ESPN’s horrendous and embarrassing coverage of Brady Quinn and his fall in the NFL Draft and honestly I didn’t think just a week later I would have to go through this again (on a side note ESPN’s boxing coverage was excellent this week, very fair and balanced props to Brian Kinney, Dan Rafael and Teddy Atlas).
I grew up watching Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant. They have been covering big boxing matches for HBO for 2 decades. They were the Madden and Summerall of Boxing, but slowly and surely they have turned into the Joe Buck and Sean Salisbury of the sport.
As soon as Merchant spoke on how he was picking Mayweather to win, but was hoping he was wrong I knew I was in for a long night.
Before I get into some of the most egregious complaints on the coverage let me tell you how the sport of Boxing works. When you are selling a fight it helps when there is a good guy and a bad guy. In a sport where the purpose is to beat the hell out of someone it makes it more interesting if the opponents don’t like each other and the fans don’t like one of the opponents. It is not that much different than the WWE in that regard. When this fight was announced it was obvious who the bad guy needed to be.
To Mayweather’s credit he did what I have been urging Kobe Bryant to do for years, he embraced being “The Bad Guy” and by doing sold Mayweather made the fight. Anyone who watched the HBO documentary De La Hoya/Mayweather 24/7 knew after the first episode why they were going to watch the next episode and it wasn’t to see De La Hoya enjoying the Masters.
The reality is that Mayweather isn’t a bad guy; he doesn’t like Larry Merchant but who does. The HBO crew more than anyone should know that Boxers are actors and they are trying to sell a show which makes it even crazier that Merchant and Lampley acted the way they did.
From the start it was obvious that Lampley was going to do everything in his power to convince you the viewer that De La Hoya was winning the fight. If you didn’t see that then you are in denial. It reached a peak when De La Hoya who had Mayweather on the ropes unloaded 10 consecutive body shots. Unfortunately for Oscar the body shots had less effect that the shots Lampley hits his ex girlfriends with, but to hear him call it, it was if Oscar had put the greatest body barrage together in the history of boxing and Mayweather would not be able to breathe for a week.
It only got worse after that. Even though De La Hoya was throwing a lot of punches he wasn’t hitting anything which leads to classic lines by Lampley:
“Judges care more about how many you throw than connect.”
“Judges can’t see what you hit but what you throw.”
No wonder boxing is considered so corrupt if judges only are about thrown punches not connected and they are so blind they can’t see what punches are connecting. Last time I checked Bert Sugar told me that bouts are scored on defense as well as offense. If you were watching the broadcast or even just reading this article you would probably be under the impression that Mayweather just ran all night, but that wouldn’t be the case. Let’s look at the CompuBox numbers.
According to CompuBox statistics, Mayweather landed 207 of 481 punches (43 percent). De La Hoya landed 122 of 587 (21 percent). (Here are some unscientific numbers: Times De La Hoya wife seen- 5 million, times Floyd Mayweather Sr. seen looking like the Predator- 10,000 and number of times Floyd Mayweather Jr. kids seen- once).
Mayweather threw 106 less punches and connected 85 more times. The power punches was even a greater disparity. But you would have never known this by listening to Lampley and Merchant who consistently ignored the brilliant boxing by Mayweather and only concentrated on the over-exaggerating flurries by De La Hoya which for the most part were not having any effect.
The one sequence that prompting me to write this article was a when I decided to track how many times Floyd who was shooting straight right hands down the pipe at Oscar before Lampley would acknowledge one. To my shock Mayweather connected with 21 right hands before Lampley begrudgingly gave him some credit. In the interim every time De La Hoya would put together his little flurry Lampley voice would go up 3 octaves speaking on the “De La Hoya epic rally”. During those 21 right hands the HBO crew had time to talk about how Mayweather isn’t as great as he thinks he is and doesn’t make entertaining fights like the greats of all time. This is something you talk about after the fight not while one of the best of our generation is putting on a boxing clinic.
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