BoxRec

Most of us have had a pop at him, havent we?

But stop and think for a moment.

Lets say allegedly and Sports Network did not exist.

I think British Boxing would be much worse off, if not dead.

What do you think?

doubt it. Maybe the wbu would be dead.

Hmm...yes but there is the flip side of that hypothesis.

If allegedly and Sports Network didn't exist...someone else would..

So really its a case of 'would they be better than the incumbant Mr Warran & Co'. In all probabilty, yes they might well be.

The WBU, and associated wank titles are without question a serious contributor in the devaluing of the "World Champion" tag that all boxers aspire to. When you have people like Toney Oakey reigning as unbeaten "world champions" (not long ago) how can that possibly be good for the sport of boxing?

Its quite simply because the average football hooligan type that attends Sports Network events simply hears "Ricky Hatton...World Champion" and thinks nothing more of it. Tickets are sold....they attend the event...and go away thinking they have seen boxing of the highest order.

It's a way to make a lot of money, and credit to Warran for being able to do so. but is it "good for the sport".

NO.

Warren deserves respect for moving through the shark infested waters of boxing so successfuly, and for so long, no doubt about that.
He's moved Hatton very skillfully it's true ( though mostly at the fan's expense ). So I'd give him credit for that.

When he started out, trying to break in on the Duff & co / BBC deal, he made ambitious matches, getting older names like Colin Jones, Magri & Sibson cracks at WBA and WBC titles. His first champ Marsh was an IBF champ.
But now he's The Man, for the last 10 years it's been the low rent WBO all the way, not forgeting the rock bottom WBU of course. And it's badly diluted the game over here as far as I can see.

Strikes me as a miserable git too - so it was strange to read Maloney's book where Warren is displayed as a very fare, humourous....almost lovable (!!!) bloke - even when Warren fires him, Maloney admits it was the right thing to do........then I realised they're still in business together 8)

I think Maloney might eventualy re-write some of those chapters in the coming years.

I think FW does get a raw deal sometimes as there is no doubt he does earn his fighters big money (some of them anyway).

He gets them titles albeit rubbish ones and we do get regular shows.

However I also feel that he is partly the reason why the game is struggling at grass roots level.

Alot of the smaller promoters struggle due to the monoply he has on the Brit boxing scene.

HH

Whether your a fan of his or not, Warren shows gets the crowd in. He pays the fighters very well, sometimes the opposition to his main fighters might not be the best, but his fighters get well paid for an easy nights work. I'm sure most boxers will be satisfied with that.

His fighters don't say "he's the best promoter in the world" for nothing. The pay is good and I'm sure if fighters like Calzaghe were not satisfied with his career, then he would have not kept on resigning with him.

He's done alot for his boxers and still can sell a show like no other in this country.

Nobody is above criticism, and being the biggest means you are also the biggest target, and that the most expectation is placed upon you, criticism comes with the territory.

That said, I think it is quite easy to lose perspective and forget that simply put Frank is a businessman, and a very successful one. I doubt many of us would be happy if we still lived in the days of 'the cartel.'

Is Ricky Hatton or Matt Skelton more protected than Bruno was early in his career? No.

I guess it's probably true to say Warren rarely gets any credit for anything these days wich is probably a bit one-sided.

And the accusations of over-protecting his fighters are in some ways a bit unfair, it's no different anywhere in the world really, not just a problem with Sports Network.

I think as fans we all (well most of us) understand that fighters will be protected up 20/25 wins to generate a fan base and make a career at world class level viable and profitable.

The problem is when our fighters get to an advanced stage in their careers, everything is in place, ability, fan base e.t.c and they just keep plodding on, Calzaghe's career being the very worst example of this.

It also says a lot about Warren's true opinion of fighters he currently has in that when he had Hamed and knew he had a fighter who was the genuine article he did let him off the leash to a degree, he hasn't done this with any other fighter.

You have to remember though that Hamed was an exceptional case, in that he was more marketable than Hatton and Calzaghe put together, he single handedly changed the pay scale for featherweights. He was a huge star in America, so much so that people are still asking about him now, he was PPV gold, and his fights stateside only cemented that opinion.

At the end of the day, it comes down to risk reward, Hamed took on big name opponents, because they were hugely lucrative. By the time Hamed got to Barrera, he was the highest paid sub-middleweight in the world, by some considerable way. He has probably even now well and truly outearnt Barrera, even without fighting again.

Yes in the days of Duff and Lawless we had to put up with endless Bruno mismatches - passed off as "The Main Event" and televised live on the BBC.

Then a few million viewers would lap it up, as our Frank knocks yet another bum into the middle of next week.
Most of these, err...opponents, looked like the cast of Night Of The Living Dead, and fought like it too.
Yet Duff came up with a pretty hilarious account of the behind the scenes negotiations involved, in that recent Bruno doc.
How he would have to sit Bruno manager Terry Lawless down and persuade him to accept these hapless opponents for Frank. Even if the guy had been sparked in the first round in his previous five starts, and never won a fight - Terry would still reject him as being too dangerous for Bruno!!

knockout artist wrote:Lets say allegedly and Sports Network did not exist.

I think British Boxing would be much worse off, if not dead.

What do you think?

I think that's like saying if Bill Gates and Microsoft didn't exist, then personal computing would be much worse off, if not dead.

And guys, the silly "gay thread" posts are getting tiresome. If you don't have anything semi-intelligent or halfway amusing to say, then don't waste forum bandwidth with recycled pictures.

(Now, if that were a tasteful selection of pics of crappy-but-bare-chested actors the rest of us hadn't seen yet, well that would be a different matter entirely. ;))