Al Haymon & Premier Boxing Champions

[Kirkland Laing]

Haymon is basically setting up his own version of professional boxing. He's going to cut out the existing sanctioning bodies and have his own PBC champions.

What that means is, if he's successful, is that you have PBC and then all the other promoters working with the WBC/A/O/IBF and so on. Boxing becomes even more bi or trifurcated than before, as it's highly unlikely that Haymon manages to sign every single boxing attraction out there.

For example, Kovalev-Stevenson is now an absolute nonstarter as Kovalev is on HBO and Haymon is never going to allow Stevenson to fight on HBO.

The best thing that can happen is for Haymon to bomb and the people bankrolling him to pull the plug. If that happens we go back to guys like Arum and Fishnets occasionally doing business with each other. Maybe these guys get into the habit of doing business while threatenend with Haymon and if/when Haymon does blow up they stay in the habit. So long term Haymon may turn out to be a good thing.

So you blame Haymon for no Kov/Stevenson fight even though they said they were happy to go to the purse bid and Kovalev asked that he be removed from his mandatory position so no purse bid would happen?

Did Haymon also cause the fall of the Romans?

No, read what I wrote again.

I did. You wrote "Haymon is not going to allow..." That looks like blame on Haymon. But the system said that the fight would happen. Haymon and Stevenson said they were looking forward to the purse bid. The fight would have been on the Network that paid most but Duva/Kovalev were not in agreement with that. If Duva won the purse bid they could have had the fight on HBO. Haymon wasn't stopping anything. Kovalev was advised to ask to be removed from his spot. And then in the last couple days he signed an HBO exclusive deal!!! So it seems more about Duva/Kovalev not being willing to fight off HBO than it was about Haymon not being willing to fight on HBO. Until that exclusive contract the fighters could fight wherever paid most, that is the roadblock. Not Haymon. Your point was right, as of that exclusive contract it is a non-starter. The problem is where you placed blame. Stevenson shouldn't have to take less to cater to Kovalev. If he does good for him. But it was absolutely Duva and Kovalev who created all barriers to that fight.

I thought Haymon/Stevenson were the problem. I like Kovalev(except the racism, the monkey thing could have been a mistake but that interview from about 6 months ago there is no denying how the man feels) I would root for Kovalev. But it is clear by actual actions who stopped this fight right now. Maybe it happens, if Haymon and Stevenson are willing to bend over backwards to make it. But before Duva/Kovalev changed things it was straight forward and simple.

I'm also saying Kovalev is on HBO and implicit in that is that Kovalev isn't fighting on another network either. And so now we have an explicitly bifurcated system where before there was at least the possibility of promoters working with each other.