We all know how much Richard Schaefer and Al Haymon can’t stand Bob Arum. This is a result of the fact Arum is what they want to be, and Arum has what they covet most – the biggest superstar in the sport Manny Pacquiao.
Schaefer and Haymon control the fraud pseudo-star Floyd Mayweather, who is worth the equivalent of a bag of shit while he sits on the sidelines, hiding from being brutally knocked out by Manny Pacquiao.
So what could Haymon and Schaefer do to retaliate from their position of weakness? Well, they could conspire to persuade HBO to begin to freeze out Arum, thus minimizing his influence on the sport, to the point where he will eventually become irrelevant. Not unlike how HBO has minimalized and ignored the richest, most prestigious prize in all of sport – the world heavyweight championship and it’s owners the Klitschko brothers, who are presently virtually irrelevant in the United States, at least from a media and cultural standpoint.
Recent news has revealed that HBO has somewhat surprisingly opted to ignore Arum’s forthcoming Cotto-Mayorga fight, which will now be televised by Showtime. It’s interesting for a few reasons because it’s a show of disloyalty to Arum, who has delivered Pacquiaomania to HBO, which has resulted in massive revenues, excitement and positivity. And Cotto-Mayorga is a superior matchup than any of Andre Berto’s recent fights, which HBO has curiously overpayed for. Cotto-Mayorga is a lot more exciting than a lot of the recent ballroom borefests which HBO has shown (Tim Bradley, Malignaggi, etc.)
We all know that ALL of Cotto’s fights are exciting thrillers, and the colorful Mayorga too always delivers in his inimitable style as the perfect “bad guy” counterpart.
For HBO to slam the door shut on Arum and Cotto suggests there could very well be a behind-the-scenes power struggle taking place – and in my opinion, Schaefer and Haymon would have to be the prime suspect architects behind this movement.
Schaefer and Haymon have ambitions to be the new masters of the boxing universe, now that Arum and Don King are almost 80 years old. They do not want to sit in the background to Bob Arum and Manny Pacquiao much longer.
Schaefer and Haymon absolutely have the ego and “resources” to do what they need to do to incrementally phase out and eliminate Bob Arum and Manny Pacquiao, which would pave the road to their almost complete control of boxing in the United States.
Of course, this means protected manufactured puppets like Andre Berto, Danny Jacobs and David Haye could soon have very prominent roles on future HBO telecasts. And truly great fighters like Pacquiao, Cotto, the Klitschkos, Pirog, Gamboa, and anyone else not controlled by Schaefer and Haymon will be minimalized or outright ignored.
Let’s hope this theory is wrong, everything is on the up and up, and boxing will revert back to the philosophy of matching the Best vs. the Best, like it was in the golden decades of yesteryear.
