Kathy Duva: What Will Boxing World Look Like Without HBO In It?
By Keith Idec
Kathy Duva remembers that June 2002 afternoon as if it were yesterday.
It was an especially meaningful moment for the veteran promoter because it marked the first time as Main Eventsâ CEO that Duva was the lead negotiator for a lucrative HBO bout involving one of her companyâs fighters. She sat in on many meetings at HBOâs headquarters in New York â first alongside her late husband, Dan Duva, then with former Main Events executive Gary Shaw and manager Shelly Finkel.
On this day, though, Kathy Duva was the one fighting for more money for Arturo Gatti. About five weeks earlier, Micky Ward and Gatti gave us an instant classic, an unbelievably brutal battle that is commonly considered one of the greatest action fights in boxing history.
She wanted more money for the late Gatti and Lou DiBella, Wardâs promoter, sought a bigger purse for his fighter. Kery Davis, then HBO Sportsâ senior vice president, didnât think their rematch was worth what Duva requested, even though they had produced an epic encounter the previous month at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.
âRoss was the one who was giving us the money,â Duva recalled for BoxingScene.com, referring to former HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg. âKery was the one saying, âAre you crazy? Heâs a club fighter.â And I was saying, âNo, theyâre not! I donât care what they are! They deserve all the money that we give them! They deserve more!â And [Davis is] going, âThis is insane!â And Ross just kept giving us more money.â
Gatti and Ward were paid handsomely for their second and third fights, both of which Gatti won.
Over the years, however, HBO has committed less and less money to its iconic boxing franchise. That sparked speculation in recent years that the premium cable network synonymous with boxing would stop televising it.
That moment nearly has arrived. The HBO doubleheader Duvaâs Main Events is promoting Saturday night in Atlantic City, New Jersey, will be the next-to-last boxing show HBO will televise.
The network announced in a statement late in September that itâll no longer broadcast boxing in 2019.
Its last telecast is scheduled for December 8 from StubHub Center in Carson, California. That tripleheader will feature womenâs champions Cecilia Braekhus and Claressa Shields and former pound-for-pound king Roman âChocolatitoâ Gonzalez in separate bouts.
HBO still draws respectable ratings for boxing, just not nearly as many viewers for the sport as it once attracted.
The first Gatti-Ward fight, for example, was watched by an average audience of approximately 3.5 million. The last bout HBO aired live, Daniel Jacobsâ split-decision victory over Sergey Derevyanchenko, averaged 500,000 viewers on October 28 from The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
Declining viewership and the emergence of deep-pocketed competition from DAZN, ESPN and FOX, in addition to longtime rival Showtimeâs strong commitment to boxing programming, prompted decision-makers at HBO to move away from airing boxing.
âObviously, it was quite a shock,â Duva said. âWhile I think everybody knew this was a possibility, I donât think anyone expected it to happen so abruptly.â
As a promoter that has always shown loyalty toward HBOâs boxing brand and expressed admiration for it, Duva doesnât know what the networkâs exit from the sport will mean moving forward.
âI canât think of a fighter, and I donât know that anyone can, who became a huge star in boxing in the United States, and probably a lot of other places, without fighting on HBO [since its first fight in 1973],â Duva said. âSo this is gonna be a very interesting transition, to see what happens. The thought was always, more than to become a world champion, was to become an HBO fighter. And the best example of that was Gatti-Ward, with no titles on the line. That was really about if HBO saw value in what you had, you didnât need a world title. That was how dominant they were.
âSo this is a whole new world weâre in and, in some respects, thereâs a ton of money thatâs out there and itâs being given to elite-level fighters, which is great for them. And then, in other respects, Iâll be as interested as anyone to see how we take someone from zero â as we did with Sergey Kovalev, for example â and turn him into a major star. Because Iâm not quite sure how you do that. So thatâs gonna be the challenge going forward for everyone in the business â whatâs our world gonna look like without HBO in it?â
HBO helped build numerous Main Events fighters into stars. Three of them, Gatti (21), Lennox Lewis (23) and Pernell Whitaker (19), are among the top 12 on the list of boxers whoâve made the most HBO appearances.
Duva closed her last deal with HBO last month for a doubleheader Saturday thatâll feature WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol.
Kyrgyzstanâs Bivol (14-0, 11 KOs) will defend his title against former WBC champ Jean Pascal (33-5-1, 20 KOs, 1 NC) in the 12-round main event at Hard Rock Hotel & Casinoâs Etess Arena. The opener of a broadcast set to start at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT will match Murodjon Akhmadaliev (4-0, 3 KOs), a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist from Uzbekistan, against Isaac Zarate (16-3-3, 2 KOs), of San Pedro, California, in a 10-round super bantamweight bout.
Bivol told BoxingScene.com recently that he took less money for this fight than he was offered to box on other platforms because he has long wanted to headline an HBO âWorld Championship Boxingâ broadcast. If Bivol beats Pascal, the hard-hitting champion will have plenty of profitable offers from which to choose, including propositions from DAZN and ESPN.
âIf youâre an elite fighter at the moment, youâre in a beautiful position,â said Duva, whose company has worked in conjunction with Bivolâs promoter, World of Boxing, on his four HBO or HBO Pay-Per-View fights since June 2017. âBut if youâre not, wow, I donât know what happens to you. Obviously, my job is gonna be to figure that out, but thatâs a challenge because for 45 years there was one answer. HBO was the biggest and the best. That was the brand and that was the thing that made you an elite fighter. If you were fighting on HBO, then you must be an elite fighter. It was incredible branding. And now, with that gone, itâs gonna be interesting.
âThese are things that we have no control over. Itâs gonna happen, with or without us. ESPN is gonna do their thing, FOX is gonna do their thing. Weâll see what other networks wanna get involved. But it used to be easy. We had a goal and I knew what it was â get to HBO. Now Iâm not sure what the goal is. In the end, I guess whoeverâs putting up the money becomes the brand. If ESPN wants to be, itâll be them. They are the No. 1 brand in every other sport. They just never chose to be that in boxing. If they wanna be that, then itâs easy. I donât know how you become a star fighting on an app. But for the short run, because the networks are interested, for whatever reason, in investing in boxing, we all have an opportunity to exploit that. Maybe weâll go to the world we had before HBO, which was networks were putting on fights, people were watching them [on ABC, CBS and NBC] and when we got to a very, very big fight, thatâs was what went on closed circuit, without a big company behind it. Itâs gonna be interesting for all of us.â
