This weekend’s controversial third fight between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez marked the end of another series of HBO’s hugely successful 24/7 series.
For those unaware, 24/7 follows the two men through their training camps in the lead up to a big fight, with behind-the-scenes access, stories and tales of the team and people involved in the three or four weeks before a pay-per-view fight, complete with dramatic voiceover by Liev Schreiber (Cotton Weary in the original Scream trilogy).
The programme is flashy, bright, bold and very Hollywood. As such, it suits one man in particular-Floyd Mayweather Jnr. Love him or loathe him, there is no doubt this programme is a perfect outlet for the superstar’s brash ‘money’ persona, and any edition without him certainly suffers.
Mayweather featured on 24/7 in September ahead of his Welterweight title fight with Victor Ortiz, and produced one of my favourite moments in television ever. This is right up there with Pearl Diving and that fight on Coach Trip a couple of years back. Enjoy…
This most recent series was fine, but had a number of issues which prevented it being considered one of the better 24/7s. Firstly, for both the Filipino Pacquiao and the Mexican Marquez, English is obviously not their native language. Now while for the most part this doesn’t really matter, as most of the programme is subtitled, it does mean you miss out on those little nuggets of chat and jokes between fighter and trainer during sparring which don’t translate as well in subtitles.
Also, anybody who has watched the series before will know how much of a superstar Pacquiao is, how big of an entourage he carries, and how much he likes singing. We have all seen this half a dozen times before, so there wasn’t really anything new there. Plus, with the respect there between him and Marquez, there was no real animosity or much controversy to liven up the programme.
It can be easy to forget that the whole point of 24/7 is to sell pay-per-views at $60 a piece, so as with all reality tv it is shot and edited in a certain way to suit an agenda. Many of HBO’s pay-per-view main events can be considered very one-sided, with an obvious winner barring a major upset. So 24/7 will often add little elements to make you believe the ‘opponent’ has a better chance than he actually does.
An example comes from last year’s fight between Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito. The world and their dog knew the Pac-man was most likely going to win by a mile, so HBO made his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza seem really worried about his fighter, who was busy in his second job of a congressman. Ariza came across as a whiner who thought his man was not giving his best effort in training.
Despite this, it must be doing something right. 24/7 is now seen as an integral part to the build-up of a big fight, and any PPV not supplemented by the series (such as the recent Bernard Hopkins v Chad Dawson fight) seems to come up on the quiet without any buzz. It has been imitated by rival network Showtime’s Fight Camp 360 programme, which is slightly less Hollywood, best reflected by the lack of dramatic voiceover and often more down to earth participants.
And 24/7 has moved in to other sports as well. First with Nascar, and most recently with ice hockey and the build up to the NHL Winter Classic. That first run was a real joy to watch last year, and the cameras will soon be following the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers ahead of their outdoor meeting on the 2nd January 2012.
But before that, 24/7 returns this weekend with the hype and build-up to the Miguel Cotto v Margarito rematch. With the hate between these two, it should be an absolute belter.
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