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Despite a decorated career that has delivered him two NRL premierships in the past four years, James Maloney had given up on representing Australia.As a result, the Cronulla and Sydney Roosters premiership winner was genuinely shocked when he was called up to Australias 24-man squad for the Four Nations.NSW playmaker Maloney joined the Kangaroos in camp on Thursday in Coogee.It awesome - it is a massive honour, Maloney said.But it came as a massive shock. It wasnt something I was expecting. It was something I never thought I would get.Maloney has been key to both the success of the Roosters in recent seasons and Cronullas surge to their maiden NRL title this year.But his path to the Kangaroos halves has been blocked by Johnathan Thurston and Cooper Cronk.However, Australian coach Mal Meninga has assured Maloney he will get to wear the green and gold when their Four Nations campaign kicks off later this month in Britain.I am just so stoked to be here, Maloney said.With the premiership and now this, it has been a pretty special week.To be in the top 20 or so players in the game is pretty amazing.I am pretty surprised.Maloney said he was still coming to terms with the selection.I wasnt even watching the announcement of the team, he said.Then, all of a sudden, my phone was going crazy with all these messages.And then I got the text to tell me to come into camp.It is all a bit surreal. Nike React Shoes Cheap . 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Pence singled in the winning run with no outs in the ninth inning to give the Giants a 7-6 victory over the San Diego Padres on Sunday. Drive thy business or it will drive thee. -- Benjamin FranklinAs the Cessna Citation X flashed through the desert sky between Los Angeles and Tucson, Arizona, Oscar De La Hoya sung the praises of a young Mexican boxer from Guadalajara he called Canelo. De La Hoya was on his way to help promote a Golden Boy card, but was much more excited about the redheaded prodigy than anybody fighting that evening at the Desert Diamond Casino.Even though Saul Alvarez was only 19 and virtually unknown outside of Mexico, De La Hoya was convinced that he was a future superstar and seemed almost beside himself at the prospect of becoming his promoter. That was in June 2009, and by the following January, Alvarez had signed a promotional contract with Golden Boy.De La Hoya hasnt always made the smartest business decisions. On the same flight he also said he could trust Richard Schaefer with his wallet. That, of course, was before their acrimonious split a few years later.But De La Hoya was right about Alvarez, who has grown to become Golden Boys top attraction and the cash cow that helped keep the company afloat through difficult times. And while that has been beneficial for Golden Boy, it has done little to help the sport in general.Immediately after Alvarezs ninth-round knockout of Liam Beefy Smith last Saturday night, HBOs Max Kellerman grilled Alvarez about his failure to fight Gennady Golovkin and the notion that De La Hoya was the one holding up a showdown.Oscar didnt say a word. He just stood there grinning, while Canelo, through HBO translator Jerry Olaya, told Kellerman that De La Hoya and he were partners and worked together.Then, clearly tired of the line of questioning, the victorious fighter raised his fist, yelled Viva Mexico! and walked away. You can do that sort of stuff when youve just drawn 51,240 to AT&T Stadium outside of Dallas and knocked the stuffing out of your handpicked opponent.Fans and much of the media have heaped blame on both Alvarez and De La Hoya for ducking GGG, but the situation goes deeper than that. Yes, the failure to make boxings hottest match is part of the problem, but its just one symptom among many others bedeviling a business model that is gradually self-destructing.One fighter ducking another is nothing new and not a particularly big deal in the big picture. Sometimes they eventually fight and sometimes they dont. Sometimes when they do, you wish they hadnt.A Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao stinker could reoccur at any time. Granted, its unlikely Golovkin and Alvarez would inflict such torture upon us, but you never know. Weve learned the hard way that public demand is no guarantee of excellence.There are many issues contributing to the current state of boxing and no quick fix or single solution. But one thing that would get things moving in the right direction would be to go back to promoting fights, not fighters. At the top level it usually takes two great fighters to make a great fight, not an A-side versus a B-side. In most cases thats a recipe for mediocrity.Money or the lack thereof is always part of the equation. Fights that belong on basic cable are now broadcast on subscription television, while fights that belong on subscription TV are now regular pay-per-view fodder. Its a mess and has been going on for so long now, its not even the new norm -- its the same old, same old.Promoters will tell you they have no choice, that theyre trapped in a cycle of spiraling costs and greedy fighters. But are they really trapped or just peddling second-rate goods, regardless of how it affects the long-range health of the sport?This sort of thing began long before Premier Boxing Champions arrived and sank hundreds of millions of dollars into purchasing television airtime and inflating its fighters purses in a bid to corner the market. Its safe to say, however, that PBC has complicated an already complicated situation.Except for buying airtime, HBO has done pretty much the same. Roy Jones Jr., for example, was paid excessive fees to fight a string of run-of-the-mill opponents such as Richard Frazier, Richard Hall and Glen Kelly. And if there was ever a fighter who didnt need to be babied, it was Jones in his prime.Jones never approached one million PPV buys. The closest he came was just over 600,000 for his match with heavyweight titleholder John Ruiz, which came at the end of Jones prime.More recently, Andre Ward was paid almost $5 million for a trio of tuneups against Paul Smith, Sullivan Barrera and Alexander Brand -- three overmatched opponents with next to no chance of winning. Its understandable that Ward wanted to ease back into to action as a light heavyweight after a lengthy layoff, but none of the bouts were worthy of subscription TV.Surely, there weree far more worthy fights that could have been made for the same amount of money.dddddddddddd When did it become a premium networks role to broadcast stay-busy fights?The rationale behind such cozy matchmaking is that important house fighters would remain obligated to a network when a valid match cropped up. They were allowed to beat up a bunch of guys who didnt belong in the same ring in order to keep them happy and in the fold. But is it a worthwhile approach?It is no accident that over the last decade only one of the matches selected fight of the year by the American Association of Boxing Writers was a PPV fight (Juan Manuel Marquez-Manny Pacquiao IV). Thats bound to happen when a significant chunk of the budget is allocated to pampering stars with meaningless paydays.Showtime has also invested in fighters rather than fights. Most recently, the subscription network has handsomely rewarded heavyweight titleholder Deontay Wilder for running roughshod over a modest collection of adversaries, none of whom posed a serious threat to his unbeaten record.The result is that after 37 pro bouts, we still havent seen the Bronze Bomber in a competitive fight. American fans want to fall in love with Wilder in the worse way, but even they are bound to eventually wonder why he has never fought a fighter theyd heard of before he signed to fight Wilder. If and when Wilder takes on what passes for an elite heavyweight these days, you can be sure it will be via PPV.The boxing industry woke up to the fact that PPV could be an extremely lucrative business model when George Foreman challenged reigning heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield on April 19, 1991, and 1.4 million homes bought the PPV.A month after the Holyfield-Foreman blockbuster, HBO televised the James Toney-Michael Nunn fight on PPV with disappointing results.Only 19,000 people bought that fight, said Mark Taffet, then senior vice president of HBO Sports. We found out that either an event is huge or its not, and when its not, you better be careful.It has been 25 years since those back-to-back PPVs and the lessons learned are routinely ignored, if not entirely forgotten.Holyfield-Foreman was a fight between a pair of future Hall of Famers, while Alvarez-Smith was what Kellerman called a showcase fight several times during the broadcast. By definition, a showcase is a setting for exhibiting something or someone in an attractive or favorable aspect.Brave Beefy proved the perfect foil for Alvarez to achieve the desired result, but despite the huge crowd on hand at the home of the Dallas Cowboys, it was not a PPV-worthy match. Alvarezs star power among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans made the fight a viable business proposition, but for a significant number of fans disappointed that Golovkin wasnt in the other corner, it was a nonstarter.Promoters and television networks bemoan the current lack of bankable stars, but are going about trying to create new ones the wrong way. The majority of broadcasters have become little more than salespeople, hyping fighters ad nauseam in the hope that the incessant puffery will turn them into box-office gold.But fighters dont become stars because talking heads say so. They do it by beating other top fighters in compelling matchups. If theres a magic formula, its this: Make good fights. The stars will rise on their merits.The Los Angeles Times reported that HBOs ratings for its regular fights are down 10 percent from 2015. Prior to Alvarez-Smith, the networks three PPV events this year have totaled an estimated 850,000 buys. Last years Alvarez-Miguel Cotto PPV in November alone generated 930,000. The reason for the disparity is simple: Alvarez-Cotto was not a showcase fight or a tuneup. It was a match between elite fighters.If less is more at this particular time, so be it. Quality always trumps quantity, and if an excellent fight is not available, it is foolish trying to persuade the paying public that it is. Thats the sort of bunkum that generates ill will and convinces consumers to spend their discretionary income elsewhere.Right now, boxing is like a sinking ship with a leaky hull, a broken bilge pump and a panicky captain running in circles like SpongeBob SquarePants.By its very nature, boxing cant expect to be perfect. Its always going to be like riding a wild horse, unmanageable and unpredictable. Good fights are its lifeblood, the only legitimate reason for its existence. Thats a truth the suits who run the sport need to tattoo backward on their foreheads so they see it every day in the mirror before going to work.Good fights are everything. Nothing else really matters. ' ' '