Boxing fans already have had a better 2015 than they did in 2014 and January isn’t even over yet. Deontay Wilder’s unanimous decision over Bermane Stiverne last week in Las Vegas to capture the WBC heavyweight championship was the highest-rated boxing telecast on Showtime in two years and has renewed American interest in the heavyweight division.
On Saturday night, HBO stages its first telecast of the 2015 when Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios meet in Bloomfield, Colo., in a third fight after splitting their first two exciting slugfests.
“I am ready to put on a great show,” Alvarado said. “I am ready to start the year off right and put a great trilogy on for the fans. I am ready and excited for this fight.”
Showtime and HBO televising meaningful bouts is business as usual in boxing. But the sport has been energized recently by the announcements that NBC and Spike TV are planning to televise prime-time boxing featuring top competition.
Following NBC’s announcement earlier this month that it will televise 20 live shows within its NBC Sports Group network, Spike TV this week promised a monthly primetime boxing series. Both platforms will be part of the Premier Boxing Champions series, mostly featuring boxers under Al Haymon Boxing Management, which features a stable of more than 150 fighters.
Spike’s first telecast in the series will be March 13, when two former welterweight champions, Andre Berto and Josesito Lopez, meet in a non-title bout and former welterweight champ Shawn Porter takes on Robert Garcia.
Spike is available in 98.7 million homes. Add in the long reach of NBC, and boxing will be exposed to potentially millions upon millions more viewers than it would on Showtime or HBO.
As many as 2 million viewers watched aging veteran Tito Ortiz in Bellator 131, a mixed martial arts event last November on Spike, making it the most watched fight on cable in 2014. Also Spike’s previous partnership with the UFC has shown advertisers will support combat sports.
“There hasn’t been premium fights on free cable TV. That’s what the opportunity is here,” said Kevin Kay, President of Spike TV. “Spike can participate in bringing boxing back to its heyday by putting free fights on cable on Friday nights, once a month featuring great fighters in competitive fights.”
Haymon is seldom interviewed for the record and often goes unseen during major events like the NBC announcement two weeks ago. While a parade of network executives and boxing’s current and past stars spoke about the venture, Haymon was seated behind the curtain working from a makeshift desk of plywood on top of two garbage cans.
The NBC bouts begin March 7 in primetime, when rising superstar Keith Thurman faces former champion Robert Guerrero and the colorful Adrien Broner challenges the rugged John Molina.
“It’s an ambitious plan,” one boxing insider said. “It will be interesting to see how Haymon satisfies his investors while working as an adviser and manager to the fighters. But if more people are watching boxing, it can’t be bad.”
That’s why 2015 already is better than 2014.