News began trickling in over the weekend that could shake the sport of boxing to its very core.
On May 7, at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas, the best fighter in the sport, World Boxing Organization welterweight king Manny Pacquiao will defend his title against three-division champion "Sugar" Shane Mosley in one of the more intriguing matchups of the new year. And for those who can't afford a ticket to the fight or the cost of the pay-per-view, you may be able to watch a rebroadcast of the match on CBS.
The news broke on Jan. 21 when Lem Satterfield, the excellent editor and writer at Boxingscene.com, reported that Top Rank, Pacquiao’s promoter, is negotiating a deal with Showtime Championship Boxing and its parent company CBS.
“We’re going with Showtime,” Michael Koncz, Pacquiao’s advisor, told Satterfield. "We've worked with HBO for many, many fights, and it's always great working with them. But, you know, sometimes change is good for everybody involved.”
Koncz said one big advantage to working with Showtime is the prospect of CBS televising a multi-part series prior to Pacquiao-Mosley to help promote the event. CBS is available in 115 million U.S. homes. Only 28 million homes currently subscribe to HBO.
HBO developed and launched the 24/7 series, which follows two fighters at home and in the gym as they prepare for an upcoming match, to build interest in Oscar De La Hoya’s very successful pay-per-views. The plan is for CBS to televise a similar series in the weeks leading up to Pacquiao-Mosley to allow tens of millions of people who aren’t familiar with the boxers to get to know them before their big fight and, in turn, order the pay-per-view. No word yet on if the fight would then be shown on a delayed basis on CBS.
Ironically, HBO’s cozy relationship with Oscar De La Hoya’s promotional company, Golden Boy Promotions, and the network’s habit of giving Golden Boy prime dates on HBO’s schedule may have fueled the move.
Top Rank's founder and CEO Bob Arum has repeatedly voiced his frustrations over the lack of available dates on HBO’s schedule and its deference to Golden Boy. While Pacquiao’s move from HBO pay-per-view to Showtime pay-per-view is big news for those in the media business, it is the involvement of CBS that raises the bar.
"It's a big benefit for us, economically, and he's going to be getting wider viewership," said Koncz. "It's a different platform for us, and I think that it's important to have a different platform. It's going to take it out of the regular pay-per-view audience because we have a lot of options with the network."
CBS Pioneered Boxing on Television
CBS and the sport of boxing have a rich history together. In 1948, the Pabst Blue Ribbon Wednesday Night Fights debuted on CBS and was a staple on the network until 1955, when the program moved to ABC.
During the series’ run on CBS, many boxing fans got their first opportunity to see longtime heavyweight champion Joe Louis, as well as his successors Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe Walcott and Rocky Marciano, fight live. As the sale of television sets boomed in the U.S. in the early 1950s, millions of fans tuned in every Wednesday night and were treated to classic boxing wars, including Sugar Ray Robinson’s middleweight title win over “The Bronx Bull” Jake LaMotta.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, CBS continued to showcase a number of all-time great fights and fighters in prime time. The pinnacle may have been Muhammad Ali’s dramatic loss to “Neon” Leon Spinks in February 1978, which remains one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.
Also, the network’s popular weekend afternoon program The CBS Sports Spectacular successfully recruited a new generation of boxing fans by showcasing many of the era’s top fighters -- including Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Carlos Palomino, Aaron Pryor, Alexis Arguello and Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini - in important bouts.
But it was Mancini's lightweight title defense against South Korea's Deuk-Koo Kim, in the outdoor arena at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas on Nov. 13, 1982, that led long-time sponsors to begin moving away from the sport. Before leaving for the fight, Kim reportedly wrote the words "kill or be killed" on a lampshade in his hotel room. After 13 brutal rounds of give-and-take action, Kim was knocked out in the 14th and slipped into a coma in the ring. He would die four days later.
By the early '90s, CBS was only broadcasting a handful of boxing cards a year and the budget for the sport had been cut so deep (due to financial problems at the network) that the best fighters had long since navigated over to HBO and Showtime. The low point came in 1997 when the CBS boxing budget could only afford sub-par matchups featuring the likes of Joe Hipp and Ross Puritty.
In 1998, with a new president at the helm, CBS re-acquired the rights to broadcast NFL games on Sundays (which it had lost to Fox in 1993), and the decision was made not to televise any boxing matches that year or in 1999.
Boxing was back briefly in the summer of 2000 when CBS attempted its first partnership with Showtime Championship Boxing. Over several weekends, the network televised a couple of heavyweight bouts – including David Tua vs. Obed Sullivan and Andrew Golota vs. Orlin Norris – on a delayed basis after those fights appeared live on Showtime. But the half-hearted effort by CBS was quickly dropped. Unfortunately, the matchups selected weren’t particularly interesting and the fights themselves were uneventful.
CBS didn’t televise another boxing match for the rest of the decade.
However, with a possible NFL strike on the horizon in 2011 and the very real threat that some or all of the upcoming NFL season could be impacted, it appears CBS is looking at alternatives in the event they need to fill the void.
Are Pacquiao, Cotto the new Leonard, Duran?
In 2000, Jay Larkin, who was then senior vice president of Showtime Sports, said, "We grew up watching Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard. You saw them where I saw them. They were not created by Showtime. They were not created by HBO and other cable networks. They were created by CBS and ABC and NBC.
"The way to get new boxing fans is to have boxing on CBS."
Larkin passed away in August 2010, but good ideas never do.
In addition to Pacquiao-Mosley, rumors are swirling that Top Rank may also be offering Showtime pay-per-view Miguel Cotto’s junior middleweight title defense against two-division champ Ricardo Mayorga on March 12. Cotto is an extremely popular champion in his own right, and that fight could provide a solid litmus test for Showtime and CBS to determine the best way to market the Pacquiao-Mosley fight, which takes place two months later.
Showtime Championship Boxing is also televising the completion of the popular Super Six tournament in 2011 and former Olympic Gold Medalist Andre Ward will be competing against former middleweight champion Arthur Abraham in the semifinals. Any involvement by CBS in promoting the conclusion of that tournament would be a huge bonus to Showtime as well.
However, the news has also caused some consternation with those at the top of the boxing world and has exposed the conflicts of interest inherent in the business.
For example, Cotto's trainer, Emanuel Steward, also provides color commentary for HBO’s World Championship Boxing telecasts and all of Cotto’s significant bouts have been televised by the network.
“I don't know too many details about it,” Steward told Satterfield late last week, when asked about the move to Showtime. “I don't try to be concerned about it. But when I first got involved with taking the fight, I just figured automatically that it was going to be on HBO because Miguel has always been an HBO fighter. I don't know what all has been going on.
“I'm just trying to get through this fight and hope that they can sort out this Showtime-HBO war, or this promoter war, or whatever's going on," Steward added.
There’s been no official confirmation from CBS, Showtime or Top Rank. But an official announcement is expected in the coming days.
One thing is certain: If the network can get exciting boxers like Miguel Cotto and the top fighter in the sport, Manny Pacquiao, on board, they couldn't pick a better time to bring big-time boxing back to CBS.
