Post by SkippyPBFor the first time in many, many years there well be boxing on NBC and
at a time (8:30 PM Eastern) that's reasonable even for someone like me.
Unfortunately I'll miss it as I have a prior engagement with my wife
tonight.
This is NBC's PBC series: "Premier boxing Champions". Yesterday I
heard an NPR segment on the show:
Pacquiao, Mayweather Fight Sparks Homes of Boxing Revival -
http://tinyurl.com/lmtvb7t
A recent article lauded Marv Albert as the ticket to gaining market
share with a younger audience (WTF?!), which frankly I believe will
work better to *assure* an older audience, their bumbling marketing
overlooked the significant sales-point of Sugar Ray Leonard being in
the analyst chair. Andre Ward, Paulie Malignaggi and Max Kellerman all
do their job with surprising skill. I'm beginning to think Paulie
might hang up the gloves altogether for a career in broadcasting while
he still has his wits about him. I hope so. Always a skilled a
capable boxer, and likely not assured "greatness" per se, I think it
would be the kind of lucky exit point most boxers never get.
Sugar Ray use to do this kind of work 15+ years ago and I recall him
being quite good at it. I'm unsure what loss of precision in thinking
has accrued in the passage of time. It's never a good guess with
boxers with long and illustrious careers.
Post by SkippyPBHowever, the matches they are showing should be good so hopefully this
will lure more viewers in and be a catapult for more boxing on open air
TV.
It's become more and more difficult to get the wife to watch boxing
with me. That's okay, but I can't really strip Saturday night out of
the social roster without blowback. Thankfully, with a DVR I can
record it for Sunday morning viewing, as I have many times recently.
For the PPV events she'll usually watch the main event, but is
uninterested in the undercard. Over the years she's gained enough
information and evaluative ability from my endless kibitzing and the
remarks of the analysts, that she can actually say, "these guys stink,
who cares who wins?". And somewhat irritated, I realize she's right.
When left to myself, I'll usually continue watching it a little, while
picking up the guitar or flipping through a magazine. But if she's
carping it's tough not to turn it off or fast-forward.
Many months back I started recording the Fox shows which always manage
to be somewhere between sad and pathetic, and hopeful but
disappointing. I bumped my DirecTV options to include Showtime a month
ago , and suddenly I have a lot more middling-to-acceptable matches to
consider, as well as On Demand viewing of their offerings over the past
year or so. So it's been a cornucopia of offerings for me personally,
though most of them fall a little short of an excellence rating.
Tonight, I'm looking forward to a stumblebum performance out of Broner,
any minor humiliation is worth plenty to me. Instead he will
undoubtedly account for himself well as a boxer--he is certainly has
the talent--but waste it by being a posterboy for bad sportsmanship and
current president of the Assholes of America.
--
-- Beware the delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets.