By Rick Reeno

Stephen Espinoza, the head of Showtime Sports, was not necessarily surprised that Golden Boy Promotions signed Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (44-1-1, 31KOs) to an exclusive long-term deal with HBO. Canelo's last five fights were carried by Showtime, including a recording breaking pay-per-view against Floyd Mayweather Jr. from last September, which generated 2.2 million pay-per-view purchases. 

Canelo made his Showtime debut on September 15th, 2012 - with a blowout of Josesito Lopez at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Golden Boy, then run by CEO Richard Schaefer, was very upset with HBO for refusing to give them a requested date of September 15th - which fell on Mexican Independence Day weekend. HBO gave the September date to Top Rank, who staged a pay-per-view with Canelo's main Mexican rival, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., defending his WBC middleweight title against Sergio Martinez at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.

Because neither promoter was willing to step away from the day, the situation resulted in a very odd scenario where two events, on rival networks, were staged only a few miles apart. Roughly six months later, HBO cut their business ties with Golden Boy, who at that point had already moved the bulk of their stable to Showtime.

After Schaefer parted ways with Golden Boy in June, Golden Boy President and majority shareholder Oscar De La Hoya began working quickly to rebuild his past business relationships with rival promoters, like Top Rank and Main Events, and he was certainly looking to reestablish the presence of fighters on HBO.

Following Canelo's victory over Erislandy Lara in the main event of a July Showtime Pay-Per-View event, there were already rumblings that he might return to HBO by the end of year. The rumblings grew stronger after De La Hoya reached a deal with HBO to have Bernard Hopkins face Sergery Kovalev in a light heavyweight unification on November 8th.

"It's a little surprised that they would go back to HBO after HBO treated them so poorly in giving Chvaez Jr. the September date over Canelo. Having said that, this announcement today comes at really no surprise. Back in July, Oscar was talking about Canelo vs. Cotto with HBO fighters on the undercard. So he's apparently been thinking about moving Canelo over to HBO for weeks if not months," Espinoza told BoxingScene.com.

According to Espinoza, what caught him by surprise is the manner in which the De La Hoya/Canelo negotiations played out. Espinoza believed that his network had reached an exclusive multi-fight agreement with Golden Boy, based on the two sides reaching an agreement on a proposal brought to them by De La Hoya.

"The surprising and disappointing part of this whole situation was the deceitful manner that Oscar went about the deal. A few weeks ago, Oscar came to us with a multi-fight, multi-year proposal on Canelo's behalf. It was a multi-year exclusive deal. He made the proposal and we accepted it exactly as he proposed. Oscar said 'great' and he promised that Canelo would be at Showtime for many years to come and he would arrange for Canelo to have a celebratory dinner with us. Now fast forward a few weeks, he's reneged on those promises and he hasn't really offered any rational explanations for doing so, not that there really could be one," Espinoza said.

Canelo's first fight back with HBO will potentially come against former welterweight champion Joshua Clottey on December 6th.

"The ironic thing there, is that when he discussed the Clottey fight to begin with, we weren't going to approve Clottey as the opponent, because Clottey has only fought three times in the last four and half years since he lost to Pacquiao. In any event, that fight was not worth the $4 million dollar license fee that he was asking for. But once HBO accepted Clottey as the opponent, we really had no choice but to accept Clottey to remain in the discussions," Espinoza said.

"Ultimately, the situation right now is no different from the Hopkins situation, where we really never got an explanation on why that fight didn't go to Showtime and we never got that on why Canelo is not staying at Showtime either."

Moving forward, Espinoza still intends to continue working with Golden Boy but it appears that he may have to make some tweaks in the way their two companies conduct business.

"It may require some different business practices. Ultimately we are not in business to deal with this promoter or that promoter or not deal with anyone in particular, we are in business to get the best fights and the best programming - and that means dealing with whoever can get us that. And if that requires that we have to deal with Golden Boy to get the best programming on the air - we'll do that and do it happily," Espinoza said.

"The bottom line for us, we are extremely happy with the work that we did with Canelo in establishing him as a pay-per-view star. We can say that for a half dozen or a dozen other fighters who are on their way to being established stars as well."