As ESPN readies to turn thirty-one later this week, the boxing industry should feel free to join in any celebrations the world wide leader plans on having. Since Chris Berman, Bob Ley, & co. emerged on television screens across the nation in September ’79, ESPN has televised boxing on a regular basis — both professional and amateur bouts. The relationship between ESPN and boxing is a crucial one that must be maintained and through the use of the internet, hopefully expanded.
This past Saturday, ironically, the network’s Friday Night Fights season series wrapped up in Montreal, Canada — marking the end to yet another entertaining and successful year of fights for the Disney-owned network. While both HBO and Showtime’s fistic budget dwarfs that of ESPN’s, Doug Loughrey, ESPN’s boxing director of programming, has done an admirable job putting together intriguing and exciting fights.
This past season, specifically, while HBO and Showtime created storylines and built-up fighters (Chris Arreola & Chad Dawson to name two whose scripts were rewritten), ESPN seized on opportunities for create and air fights that already had intriguing storylines built-in.
For instance, back in February, Antonio Escalante (24-2, 15 KO) took on Mickey Roman (30-7, 22 KO). Built-in storyline: Escalante and Roman were childhood rivals, both having grown up in Juarez, Mexico. They scrapped once some thirteen years previous to this bout on the streets of the city and had a chance to run it back once more inside the ropes in El Paso, Texas — Escalante’s adopted hometown. After ten hellacious rounds in front of the pro-Escalante crowd, the judge’s awarded the fan-favorite the unanimous decision victory.
Then in June, Zab Judah (39-6, 27 KO) returned to the ring in front of five thousand fans in Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center. Built-in storyline: Judah returned back to 140 lbs. and claims he is refreshed. This interested 625,000 people enough to tune into Friday Night Fights to watch “Super” Judah stop Jose Armando Santa Cruz (28-5, 17 KO) within three rounds — landing a crisp, beautifully thrown uppercut to drop his opponent in the third.
I could continue to rattle of a laundry-list of built-in storylines that were flushed out during this past Friday Night Fights season, but that would be silly. Point is, Loughrey’s vision in what to invest in and create for his Friday Night Fights series is admirable. What is even more exciting for boxing fans is that it seems Loughrey has a vision for boxing on ESPN that stretches beyond the television set — which could lead to endless possibilities.
A few months ago, ESPN announced that it had struck a deal with the English Premier League, Italy’s Seria A, the German Bundesliga, and Spain’s La Liga — among others — to air select soccer games on ESPN3.com. The stream, which pending one’s bandwidth has the potential to come in clearer than on a television set, is offered for free, even if the game is not shown on ESPN or ESPN2.
On July 31, ESPN announced that, only after HBO and Showtime passed up the opportunity to televise the fight, it will be showing the September 11 Wladimir Klitschko-Samuel Peter IBF & WBO title fight live on ESPN3.com and replay the bout the following day on ESPN.
On the following Friday, the 17th of September, ESPN3.com will air the live flyweight bout between Edin Dapudong vs. Wilbur Uicab, live from Cancun, Mexico and replay it the next day on ESPN Deportes.
If ESPN’s budget grows next year — like it did with soccer this year — ESPN3.com can serve as a crucial player in how boxing fans will be able to watch intriguing fights in high quality for no cost.
The relationship that boxing has with ESPN is vital — regardless of the talent they are able to book for Friday Night Fight cards. When ESPN has a financial investment in a sport, they are more willing to support it and promote it. If their financial investment grows, there is little doubt that the coverage will mimic that.
ESPN has the potential to drive and push sports. When it increased it’s stake in NASCAR at the expense of hockey, ESPN created the NASCAR Now television show, while axing National Hockey Night. Once ESPN shut the door on the NHL completely, hockey turned Versus to air their national games, including playoffs. This led to a columnist at the spoof-newspaper The Onion to pen an article titled “NHL Signs Broadcast Deal with Food Network” — an obvious jab at being forced to televise their sport on deep cable.
None of us want boxing to end up on the proverbial Food Network and the opportunity with ESPN3.com emerging as a serious outlet for major sports to be televised live on is great news for boxing. Hopefully the Klitschko-Peter fight draws enough traffic to the site that it will catch the attention of the big wigs at the world wide leader. If that’s the case, then like soccer, maybe the people running the show at ESPN can kick a little more cash boxing’s way. And with an expanded boxing budget for ESPN, we’d all reap the rewards.