Boxing Challenge: Streaming isn't perfect

Sometimes in boxing, everything that can go wrong does just that as Golden Boy Promotions would find out with their much-ballyhooed debut on Facebook.

To start with. Joseph Diaz, one of GBP's in-house favorites didn't make weight for his minor title challenge, but still anticipated event vs Jesus Rojas and despite yet another drop in the bucket as far as boxing's problems with the scale, the fight still was scheduled for Saturday night and still loomed as a fight to be seen.

For four rounds, Diaz and Rojas looked to be on their way to give the fans watching on Facebook a nice main event and then pfft.
The bottom dropped out of the live stream and it would not return for me until midway through round ten, so no scoring for me in this one as Diaz was the winner via unanimous decision.

In the boxing challenge, I earned two points for the Diaz win and Ramon Malpica selected Rojas for zero points.
The standings currently show a 122-97 lead for me over Ramon.

Since I don't have a lot to write about the fight itself, this does bring forward one of the concerns that I have as so many platforms seem to be moving to or originating from digital platforms.
Yes, this was a rocky start for boxing on Facebook, but keep in mind, this was a free offering.
That does take some of the sting away from the failures last night, but it does make me think of how I would feel if I was paying to see this fight as I will shortly when I begin to subscribe to ESPN+ and perhaps even DAZN.
You constantly read about the "Cord Cutters" that are moving away from television and into watching programs through various streams and avenues, but even though I've used some of these at times, I've seen the quality vary from top notch to 1970's antenna level.

I've often worried about the quality of streams and especially being able to rely on the stream being available when you need it.
I've noted that I usually watch Showtime's boxing offerings online because I'm not always home to watch them live on the big screen and they have been uneven to be charitable.
That's not always on Showtime as far as fault can be placed, there are many variables to how these things can go awry and since I'm paying to have the network on television and the stream is an added bonus for being a subscriber, it's tough to get too worked up over the occasional problem, even if it's not welcomed.

However, as more and more live events are moving to be internet based and many of those are on some type of subscription plan, the signal/stream needs to be one that can be relied on to be consistently available and of good quality.
Fans of a sport that are becoming more and more subscription based will not stand for missing large chunks of main events and should that happen for a more important fight than Diaz-Rojas that fans are paying for, boxing could take a severe shot for being nothing more than a test subject as we make further steps into the streaming age.
For boxing's sake-they had better get the concept correct and be a reliable provider- or pay the price for advancing an idea before it was prepared to do so.