We spend a lot of time in this space commenting on how HBO is using or should be using its considerable power in boxing. I think we can safely tuck its serial counterprogramming of Showtime's innovative Super Six tournament under "shouldn't be using its power that way."

I get it; HBO and Showtime are in competition. But they are players in the same sport. And contributing to the overall health of that sport helps both networks. So while the attention received by Showtime's super middleweight tournament upstaged HBO, and it surely stung in HBO headquarters, it does HBO no good to put on boxing shows on the same night of Super Six fights. Which it is doing each of the next two occasions that present themselves.

Make mistake: HBO is cannibalizing the sport in order to make a bully move. It's cannibalizing its own audience, in fact. There's no way its March 6 show pitting Devon Alexander against Juan Urango in a junior welterweight fight will get the ratings going against Showtime's Arthur Abraham-Andre Dirrell that it would if it was going against lesser competition Feb. 27 or March 20, the nearest available dates where neither network has any programming.

It's pulling the same bully move April 17, when it plans to put on a middleweight fight between Kelly Pavlik and Sergio Martinez teamed with a super middleweight fight between Lucian Bute and Edison Miranda. That'll go against the long-scheduled Showtime Super Six doubleheader of Carl Froch-Mikkel Kessler and Andre Ward-Allan Green -- unless Showtime moves its show one weekend later to avoid the HBO doubleheader, to April 24, when HBO is planning to put on a heavyweight fight between Chris Arreola and Tomasz Adamek. Either way, HBO's ratings will suffer for competing against the Showtime offering.

It's not that I don't think HBO has a valid interest in winning some kind of competition against Showtime. I just happen to think there's a better way to do it. HBO could instead offer on a different weekend its doubleheader hyping the idea of the winner of Bute-Pavlik being the true boss at super middleweight, not the winner of the Super Six tournament. Does it undermine the Showtime tournament? If it's a good show, yeah, it does. If Bute and Pavlik prove they're better than anybody in the Super Six tournament, yeah, it does. It tells people that no matter what happens at Showtime, HBO is the joint to subscribe to for boxing. What's sad is that the Bute/Pavlik show is a good show, and it might be a better show than the Showtime offering that night. It could just the same upstage the Showtime offering the week before as it could the week of. Instead, it's going to kill the audience for both shows, or, at minimum, kill the audience for both shows on April 24.

And it's not like HBO just plays this game with Showtime. It has a history of doing this counterprogramming stunt with the UFC, too, even though there are plenty of dates to go around for both mixed martial arts and boxing, as it's doing May 1 with the Floyd Mayweather-Shane Mosley welterweight pay-per-view, a date the UFC had reserved for a while. Given the option between luring a diehard UFC fan to boxing on a night when there's no UFC show or going head to head with the UFC and forcing said UFC fan to side with his or her historical allegiance, HBO has opted to put a show on the same date as the UFC. Rather than lifting all fight sports' ratings, it chose to diminish ratings for both boxing and MMA. (The UFC moved its show to the next weekend in response. Increasingly, I find myself agreeing with UFC boss Dana White: "We were trying to not go the same night as boxing but these [expletive] guys can't get out of their own way," White told Cagewriter. "I have never seen anything so unorganized, selfish and dysfunctional as boxing. It's a joke!")

HBO's real goal here is to scorch the earth to the degree that Showtime doesn't try anything ambitious like the Super Six again, its own ratings be damned. In boxing, there's just too much "I'm going to piss all over everything rather than get ahead on my own merits" going around these days. This bullying hurts everyone, including HBO, Showtime and most especially the boxing fan who has to choose between two shows. It's not brilliant. It's idiotic.

I can tell you what I'm going to do in response to these shenanigans: DVR the HBO shows on both nights and watch the Showtime offerings live. I'm not sure my little drop in the ocean will do much to sway HBO from pulling this junk, but it's all I can do. Maybe you'll consider doing the same.

(Information for this entry pulled from a BoxingScene article that I caution you not to click on if you hate getting computer viruses, and from ESPN's boxing schedule.)

(Boxing is afraid of an event where people alternate between skiing and shooting rifles.)

There ain't jack happening in boxing because HBO is scared of the Winter Olympics. However, there are a ton of plans being made for the days when pugilism no longer cowers in fear at the thought of competing against curling, luge and biathlon. (Kudos to Jake Donovan on a great column on that, but visit BoxingScene at the risk of acquiring more spyware than you wanted.)

So instead of saving it all up for Friday's Quick Jabs column, what say we go Round and Round right now to look at fights in the works. Besides the folks in the headline, we have news on Andre Berto, Glen Johnson, Ali Funeka, Steve Molitor, Erislandy Lara, Victor Ortiz and others.

This weekend's Pinoy Power card features in its main event one of the two finest Filipino boxers in the world, junior bantamweight Nonito Donaire (second only to Manny Pacquiao), but alas, he's in something of a mismatch on paper. Gerson Guerrero is a heavy hitter, but he doesn't have a single win of note and he's lost to the only highly-ranked fighters he's fought. Donaire, three years after his star-making performance against Vic Darchinyan, hasn't had a marquee fight since then yet, and by that I mean a fight against a fellow elite boxer or against a boxer who has a big name -- and while Donaire's team is talking about fighting Jorge Arce and a sequel with Darchinyan in 2010, we've heard that all before.

Fortunately, the undercard of Pinoy Power 3 -- technically, the card is named Pinoy Power 3/Latin Fury 13, what with Pinoy fighters going up against Latin fighters -- features at least two significant, competitive fights on paper. Eric Morel and Gerry Penalosa are two elder statesmen bantamweights, with Penalosa holding a title strap in the division until last year. Mario Santiago is rated #6 at featherweight by Ring magazine, and Bernabe Concepcion has the potential to be a top-10 talent. Morel-Penalosa stacks up as a meeting of sharp boxers on the verge of one last title shot. Santiago-Concepcion stacks up as the better scrap of the two, and the winner gets a second chance at a title shot. (I'm not sure if Fernando Montiel-Ciso Morales at bantamweight will be competitive, given Montiel's periodic shakiness and Morales' inexperience.)

(The Mayans may ultimately be correct about the outcome of the world but I suspect it will happen much later in the fight, so no bonus points.)

While Spidershark got the winners right this week, he was less accurate in his exact predictions. Alexmac and Arthur Billette both saw the finish of the Edwin Valero fight coming in round 9, enough for Alexmac to move into a tie for second place with BigMaxy. Arthur went with Yusaf Mack over Glen Johnson, leaving him tied for fourth.

Irvin Ryan was closest to predicting the Johnson knockout by anticipating an eighth-round stoppage, as most saw the fight going into the late rounds. However, he stands tied with Arthur for fourth as he expected Antonio DeMarco to provide a stiffer test for Valero.

The 22-player logjam for third place that we saw in the last standings update has cleared significantly. Eight players now stand tied for third, having predicted the winner correctly in each fight without the precision of those at the top of the list.

If you opt to use a team name, please use it every time. I am personally guilty of not doing this once, so no hard feelings, but compiling the scores is exponentially more difficult if names are confused. Also, please note the time stipulations for submitting your picks. Picks need to be in by 11:59 PM EST the day before the fight to assure no funny business.

Your standings below; if you see any tabulation errors, notify me and we can adjudicate:

Welcome to the latest edition of the Jersey Fight Journal, where a snowstorm prevented me from attending the scintillating Paul Williams-Sergio Martinez fight in December yet a feared blizzard miraculously dissipated tonight, giving me the great fortune to watch Peter Quillin and Fernando Zuniga clinch until things got uncomfortably intimate. Would I like to see a Fight of the Year candidate? No, thanks, I’d rather gather material for the next “Quiet Man Hug.”

(As pose-offs go, Quillin-Zuniga pales in comparison to Zoolander-Hansel. As fights go, Quillin-Zuniga pales in comparison to Zoolander-Hansel.)

Tomasz Adamek electrified the crowd (by being Tomasz Adamek) and turned in a solid, if unspectacular, performance against Jason Estrada on a card that was a little lackluster overall. However, the amazing atmosphere, outstanding Polish fans, and sweet luxury suite hookup (thanks to Tony Tavares and Scott Cowan for inviting me along) helped salvage the night. It is my duty to salvage the following Journal with my intellectual insight and scathing wit.

Don’t get your hopes up.

It was a fallacy to think lightweight sensation Edwin Valero was a one-dimensional puncher, which isn't the same as saying he's a master craftsman in the ring. But he showed off every skill he has Saturday on Showtime in beating up young Antonio DeMarco and forcing his corner to call a halt to it at the conclusion of the 9th round.

It's the punching power that always stands out in Valero's game, but what caught my eye was his exceptional defense. I'd said before the fight that Valero looks vulnerable and wild at times, but I also noted that he's really good at controlling distance and has nice reflexes on D. If Valero fights like this every time out -- and there's no guarantee he does, because even he acknowledged this was his best performance -- I go from being dubious that any lightweight in the world beats him to damn-near certain.

A recap of the fight, followed by a continually-updating list of other Saturday night results:

The old man just keeps plugging along. 41-year-old Glen Johnson will get another shot at a light heavyweight title belt after a 6th round knockout win over 30-year-old Yusaf Mack on ESPN2. As much as I love the amiable, classy Jamaican, and as happy as I am for him in notching this win, I thought he looked older still than before, and beltholder Tavoris Cloud is worlds better than Mack. But, for now, he's surely reveling in another chance after a comprehensive loss in November to Chad Dawson.

In a Friday night that featured knockouts galore on two different channels, welterweight Freddy Hernandez massively kayoed DeMarcus Corley in the 5th of the main event on Showtime, looking better doing it than he did in his previous appearance on the network.

You don't usually expect it to work out for a fighter who protests a bunk decision with one of the alphabet sanctioning organizations, because usually that only happens if there's some technicality. But the WBA is reviewing the bunk decision last weekend that gave Beibut Shumenov (at right in the picture) the light heavyweight title owned by Gabriel Campillo (left), and I think there might be just the right technicality here. The WBA, you see, is upset that only one of its judges was appointed for the fight. It just so happens that that judge, Levi Martinez, is the one who got it right, scoring it 117-111 for Campillo, comparable to the unofficial score of nearly everyone who watched. See, you can't underestimate the egos of the alphabet gang. Observe:

“Unfortunately due to the Muhammad Ali Law approved by the American Congress and applied in the main jurisdictions where WBA world championships are carried out, they have the freedom to approve and appoint the officials of the fights,” said WBA vice president Gilberto Jesus Mendoza. “I’m not trying to generate a controversy but our judges attend yearly seminars to reduce the possibility of controversy and to do justice in the ring. In this particular fight they only accepted Levi Martínez from the WBA.”

I'm not saying the result will be overturned or anything like that, but I feel like I'm hearing "mandatory rematch."

Speaking of Campillo-Shumenov, did you know I was big in Spain? My write-up of that fight led a publication there to say The Queensberry Rules was a "famed" or "famous" boxing blog, per TQBR friends-of-the-site Caitlin, Eugene and Jim, all of whom quickly pounced on translation duties when I put out simultaneous requests. Thanks, Spaniards!

The subjects in the headline, and more besides -- like an array of fights in the works -- await you in this edition of the WORLD-FAMOUS Quick Jabs...

What he failed to realize is that for every Paul Williams, there is a Yuriorkis Gamboa. Prompted by my friend’s innocuous comment, I gathered what I consider to be the most interesting names in boxing today. I culled the list from the Ring rankings. Get your tongue ready for some twisting and enjoy.

We've already previewed and predicted the two biggest fights of the weekend but there's a lot happening this week besides. Let me be your Sacajawea. (Also, have I mentioned you need to get your predictions in for the prediction game ASAP? I have, I know it, but I just want to remind you again for Friday's fight you'll need to get it in by 11:59 ET tonight, and Saturday's you'll need it in by 11:59 p.m. ET Friday.)