Many people that follow boxing are already aware of the power that HBO has when it comes to making fights, and quite often, it can be frustrating.

For instance, when Kelly Pavlik was picked apart by Bernard Hopkins, Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant quipped throughout the later rounds that Pavlik didn’t need to take the fight and he shouldn’t have chosen to fight the crafty Hopkins.

What they never acknowledged was that HBO practically forced Pavlik to take that fight. HBO turned down several opponents that Pavlik was interested in fighting, basically leaving Hopkins as the only option that they would approve of. And since HBO is writing most of the checks these days, Pavlik had no choice. That didn’t stop them from criticizing his decision to take the fight as he was getting torn apart, however.

Fast forward to this week. According to BoxingScene.com, HBO turned down a potential fight between Jermain Taylor and Carl Froch, one of the biggest fights that can be made at the super-middleweight level.

This is a true world-class fight. Outside of Joe Calzaghe and probably Mikkel Kessler, these may be the next two best super-middleweights in the world.

But according to BoxingScene, “HBO is not willing to approve a super middleweight bout between WBC champion Carl Froch and mandatory Jermain Taylor. Instead, HBO is trying to make a rematch between Taylor and Winky Wright.”

I like Winky Wright, but the fact is that he has not fought in a year and a half, when he lost to Hopkins. That was his only fight above middleweight, where he seemed completely out of his element, and now HBO is trying to force Jermain Taylor to pass up a title shot to give Winky a rematch? Ridiculous.

Boxing needs to get its shit together, and the promoters taking the power back from HBO is step one. They are a television network, not a promoter. I understand that the money is coming from them, but they need to go back to the days when the fights would get made and HBO would pay for the right to air those fights.

Instead, now we are forced to watch what HBO considers “names” fight nobodies over and over again, until they find a matchup they deem appropriate. How many times are we going to have to watch James Kirkland, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Alfredo Angulo and the rest of the undercard all-stars fight people we’ve never seen before?

Jermain Taylor vs. Carl Froch is a great fight. HBO should be in no position to deny Taylor a title shot like this.

If I’m Jermain Taylor, I take the fight and let HBO decide if they want to air it. I don’t know what his contract with HBO entails, but hopefully somebody in Taylor’s camp reads through the legalese and finds a way to make this fight happen — with or without HBO.

All we can do as fans is not buy HBO PPV’s, but for most of us, we can’t say no when fight day comes around.

If only Showtime or ESPN would find room in their budgets, either one of them could truly challenge HBO for boxing media supremacy. Until someone is willing to do that though, we are going to be forced to watch whoever HBO says we are going to watch.

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