This is a special version of toe-to-toe. We chatted with Ross Greenburg, the President of HBO Sports, which in the sports television industry is like being president of the New York Yankees. But we also got some incite into the upcoming “Mayweather-Marquez. 24/7” series, which debuts on Saturday night at 10:45 p.m.
Mayweather Jr. – and his father to some degree – has offered some of the most entertaining and bizarre moments in the brief but captivating history of the 24/7 series. Saturday’s show starts the buildup to the September 19, pay-per-view showdown between Floyd and Mexican champion Juan Manuel Marquez.
Neutral Corner: So we welcome Floyd Mayweather Jr. back to 24/7.
Ross Greenburg: It's going to be entertaining. I've seen some of the rough cuts already. It's Floyd as you've always remembered him. He hasn't changed that personality. It's dramatic, exciting, can't-wait-to-see-what-Floyd-does-now television.
NC: Has anything changed about Floyd?
RG: He's not throwing money at the screen for 30 minutes. He's settled down a little, but he's still Floyd. He's still brash and overly confident and ready to go to work.
NC: How much does boxing miss Floyd?
RG: Boxing missies him. Whenever you take that type of a personality out, you are going to have a problem. This is a guy who has risen to superstar status, we desperately needed Floyd back.
NC: What’s your sense of how much of what we see is the real Floyd or Floyd playing to the camera?
RG: There's no question he sees the camera go on and he knows he's on. But I've been around him enough off camera to know that there's no sleep button, he's just constantly on the go. I'm not going to say that he doesn't have a certain television flair, that he doesn't invent, but most of it is the real thing. I was at a dinner with him and a friend of mine in Los Angeles and for two hours we didn’t get a word in edge-wise. There are definitely two sides of him. He grew up in a dysfunctional family, which he'll admit, and Floyd's stuck in the middle of that. And that's part of the program as well. He's not coming from Ozzie and Harriet in terms of his experience and family. You are dealing with a pretty combustible situation and it's amazing that he can construct some kind of normalcy in his own family.
NC: Is Floyd Sr. back?
RG: Floyd Sr. is back involved. That actually developed in our last 24/7 with Pacquiao and Hatton. Floyd Sr. said some gracious things about Floyd Jr. and I alerted them to that. They watched the show and there was a coming together. We developed into a peacemaker. So they are back as father and son and we show that in show one.
NC: Did you expect 24/7 to be as successful as it is?
RG: All we knew was that we were creating a type of program that would appeal to a younger demographic. My daughters go from one reality show to the next. I knew we had a chance to get the mainstream fan back into boxing and at the same time reach a new audience. What producers Scott Boggins, Rick Bernstein and Dave Harmon have done was magical. In the edit room, Thomas Odelfelt and Abtin Motia created some of the best docu-drama on television.
NC: You are moving away from “reality television” and calling it a “docu-drama.”
RG: Yes, because this is real television. These are two fighters preparing for a very real sports event. This isn’t 12 people living in the same apartment trying to win a singing competition. I don't like the words "reality television," because it's less than real in many cases. The precursor to “24/7” was “Hard Knocks,” what we did with the NFL training camps. We used “Hard Knocks” to explore what we can do in boxing. And since Chad Ocho Cinco has expressed an interest in boxing, I’ve already alerted Leonard Ellerbe (Floyd’s manager) that the best all-time “24/7” show would be Floyd Mayweather Jr. against Chad Ocho Cinco.
NC: Talk about the fight itself. There are those who will say this fight is Floyd picking on another smaller fighter. What’s your take?
RG: Ask Manny Pacquiao if Juan Manuel Marquez is to be taken lightly. There are certain people in boxing who will tell you that there has never been a boxer who has been able to adjust like JMM can during a fight. Look at the Diaz fight. He was getting beat and then he took him out. He'll also fight in rounds six through 12 as if he is fighting in the first 30 seconds of the fight, fresh as a daisy. He is born and bred, a Mexican fighting machine. And as we've known in the past that some of the greatest technical fighters of all time have come out of Mexico and you combine that with the will and the skill, this is a tough opponent for Floyd. There are two questions. The first is, can Juan Manuel Marquez climb up to the 144-pound level. The second is, can Floyd Mayweather Jr. come back in the same style and mode or has he lost a little bit since the last time we saw him.
NC: OK. In the history of HBO boxing, what’s the 24/7 that you would have loved to do?
RG: It would definitely involve Sugar Ray Leonard. I think two greats ones would have been the first Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fight. And the second would have been Leonard against Marvin Hagler. That fight was like six years in the making. I actually used to bug Ray in the early 1980s about that fight, that was my dream fight for Ray. You had the flamboyant, the electric superstar and the image of Hagler, who was about destruction in the ring.
Source: newsday.com
No comments:
Post a Comment