LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK – April 24, 2024 – Fuse Media, the global leader of inclusive entertainment, expands its sports portfolio with a partnership between six-division, 10-time World Champion and current Chairman and CEO Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and the El Rey Rebel FAST Channel to air some of the most memorable fights in recent history as part of a new “Friday Night Fights” series launching on the channel Friday, May 3 at 8 PM ET/PT.

Kicking off Cinco De Mayo weekend, the new weekly series premieres on the 21^st anniversary of the bruising May 3, 2003 fight between the Golden Boy himself, Oscar De La Hoya, and Luis Ramon “Yori Boy” Campas. Rounding out the special double-header launch that evening is the classic 2009 matchup featuring Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton.

Other historic contests in the weekly series will include Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Ricky Hatton (2007); Manny Pacquiao vs. Marco A. Barrera (2007); and Saul Alvarez vs. Josesito Lopez (2012).

In addition, El Rey Rebel’s “Friday Night Fights” series will feature events from Fuse Media’s other sports television partnerships with premier Hispanic Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) sports franchise “Combate Global MMA” and “BYB Bare Knuckle Fighting.”

“The early part of the 21st century was a golden era of boxing across a number of weight divisions and fans can now go back in time to rewatch some of the best fighters of that time,” said Chairman and CEO Oscar De La Hoya. “Casual and boxing hardcores alike always tuned in when three guys named Pacquiao, Mayweather and De La Hoya were fighting and now they’ll have an opportunity to see all three in their prime on ‘Friday Night Fights.’”

“We couldn’t be more excited that 10-time world champion Oscar De La Hoya and his Golden Boy Promotions are bringing some of the most epic fights in modern boxing history to El Rey Rebel, said Miguel Roggero, Chairman and CEO of Fuse Media. “With these thrilling matches, ‘Friday Night Fights’ will be a cornerstone franchise for El Rey Rebel, unleashing the types of raw emotion and adrenaline that the channel’s growing number of viewers are craving.”

De La Hoya continues to champion the sport of boxing, promoting some of the biggest events in the sport including a massive PPV event featuring International star Ryan Garcia on April 20 and a historic Mexico vs. Mexico PPV clash with current client, former WBO Junior Middleweight Champion and current super middleweight world title contender Jaime Munguia in his upcoming May 4 fight against generational PPV star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

Below are more detailed descriptions of some of the classic fights included in the weekly “Friday Night Fights” series:

Oscar De La Hoya vs. Luis Ramon Campas

Following the dramatic knockout of rival Fernando Vargas, Oscar De La Hoya defended his unified WBA and WBC Junior Middleweight World titles against beloved Mexican fighter Luis Ramon “Yori Boy” Campas on Friday, May 3, 2003, the weekend ahead of Cinco de Mayo. De La Hoya gave Campas a beating, knocking his mouthpiece out so many times that Referee Vic Drakulich had to dock the challenger a point in round six. Oscar forced Drakulich’s hand in stopping the fight in the seventh round.

Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton

“The Battle of East vs West” was a professional boxing match for the IBO and The Ring light welterweight championship between Manny Pacquiao from General Santos, Philippines and Ricky Hatton from Manchester, United Kingdom. The bout was held on May 2, 2009, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada and drew 1.75 million pay-per-view buys. El Rey Rebel’s telecast airs one day after this matchup’s 15^th anniversary.

Saul Alvarez vs. Josesito Lopez

This matchup on September 15, 2012 showed the world Saul Álvarez’s size and experience in the boxing ring. Alvarez knocked Josesito Lopez down in the second, third, and fourth rounds en route to stopping him in the fifth round after referee Joe Cortez determined he was taking too much punishment.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Ricky Hatton

Billed as “Undefeated,” the event on December 8, 2007 was a boxing superfight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Reigning WBC and Ring Magazine Welterweight World Champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and reigning Ring Magazine Super Lightweight World Champion Ricky Hatton. The fight was for Mayweather’s WBC & The Ring welterweight titles, which Mayweather successfully defended, defeating Hatton by TKO in the tenth round.

Marco A Barrera vs. Manny Pacquiao

Manny Pacquiao vs. Marco Antonio Barrera II, billed as “Will to Win,” was a super featherweight boxing match on October 6, 2007, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas that was distributed by HBO PPV. Barrera came out smarter in this fight as he survived up to the final round, but Pacquiao easily outboxed him throughout the contest. Pacquiao defeated Barrera via unanimous decision, with two judges scoring the bout 118–109, whereas the third scored it 115–112.

El Rey Rebel is available on The Roku Channel, Freevee, Canela, TCL, Fuse.tv and on Fuse+ for subscribers who sign up for the platform or authenticate through their current TV provider.

ABOUT EL REY REBEL

El Rey Rebel sets your rebellious, independent spirit on fire. The Latino-infused network showcasing a wide range of originals, iconic feature films, and TV series. Unleash your inner rebel with raw action, fearless fun and pure mayhem. We live for Kung Fu classics, martial arts, grindhouse, gritty crime, extreme sports and all the adrenaline fuel you can handle. Plus, we keep our fire lit for sci-fi, comics, horror and beyond.

ABOUT FUSE MEDIA

Fuse Media is a Latino-owned, global entertainment company, and the leader in creating and distributing inclusive, purpose-driven stories and experiences for and with culturally diverse young adults. With a portfolio of award-winning original content and a growing multiplatform global footprint, Fuse Media strives to authentically reflect the world of its young and diverse audience, pioneering a multicultural and creative destination. The Fuse Media family includes linear channels Fuse and FM (Fuse Music); subscription streaming service Fuse+; a rapidly growing roster of owned and operated diverse-focused FAST channels; Fuse Studios, its in-house production arm; Ignition Studios, a specialized production company defining the future of inclusive content; a growing branded content and live events business; and Fuse Media Culture Collective, a suite of partner-owned FAST channels that add to the company’s massive scale in reaching multicultural audiences.

ABOUT GOLDEN BOY

Golden Boy Promotions was established in 2002 by current Chairman and CEO Oscar De La Hoya, an International Hall of Famer and a 10-time World Champion in six divisions. Golden Boy is the first Latino-owned boxing promotions company with a world-renowned reputation in organizing the largest and highest grossing events in the history of the sport. With more than two-decades as an industry leader and a lengthy roster of past, current and future world champions, Golden Boy will continue to leave an indelible mark in sports history.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – No reprieve.  The grim numbers grow grimmer each evening as a fine local publication, RivardReport, sends its weeknightly communique detailing this city’s latest COVID-19 stats.  The mortality rate, across Texas, remains suspiciously low.  Attempts to attribute deaths to pneumonia and influenza, successful in the late winter and early spring, now look craven in summertime – and so the numbers of dead grow no matter efforts to suppress them.

If we never knew the economic might of local schoolboards it was a failure of our collective imagination.  As small schoolboards vote to keep classes virtual till round Thanksgiving, employers’ return-to-office plans get suspended.  In its tragic way there’s something charming about five-person independent schoolboards effectively telling multinational corporations what they can’t do with 200,000 employees.  There’s a messy vitality to it; decentralization breeding quirky consequences.

None of this helps our beloved sport’s hibernation.  Last week brought more postponements and cancelations in boxing, while Canada forbade American baseball players from migrating, and the inevitable day Americans will have to begin sneaking across Mexico’s northern border drew a bit closer.  In a few weeks’ time DAZN will begin broadcasting anonymous British prizefighters the way ESPN has broadcasted anonymous North and South Americans, in an effort to prove that boxing-mad Brits aren’t yet mad enough to tune-in for unattended smokers.

There’s nowhere to go, then, and nothing to watch, so we recede deeper in literature or depressants, or both, and that brings us an idea for this week’s column.  Some of our language’s greatest poetry must be read aloud to be understood, reading it aloud makes it not only accessible but many times more entertaining, and so, perhaps, acting-out our favorite combinations might help us be better entertained by prizefighting if it returns.  Geoffrey Chaucer and Sterling A. Brown, poets separated by an ocean and about 700 years, specifically are two men whose seminal works I’ve been enjoying for a while and thought to write about.

Most of us, probably, are familiar with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, at least a couple of them, for enduring them in highschool literature classes.  I remember the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath and none others from a week of 11th-grade English.  Years later I returned to Chaucer and got an abridged copy with Chaucer’s original text on the right page and a modern-English translation on the left and had trouble believing how much more fun they were than I remembered.  There were no affordable copies of the unabridged text, alas, and so I read what 300 pages were available and put Chaucer away.  A couple years later, unbeknownst to me, Penguin Classics published all 800 pages of Chaucer’s Tales in their original prose, an English that preceded Samuel Johnson’s dictionary by 350 years.  Read silently, they are mostly nonsensical, and read aloud they are fabulous (here Chaucer describes a monk):

 And for to festne his hood under his chin

He hadde of gold ywroght a curious pin;

A love-knotte in the gretter ende ther was.

His heed was balled, that shoon as any glas,

And eek his face, as he hadde been enoint;

He was a lord ful fat and in good point.

His bootes souple, his hors in greet estat.

Now certeinly he was a fair prelat;

He was nat pale as a forpined goost.

A fat swan loved he best of any roost;

Sterling A. Browne came out a tradition very different Chaucer’s and sought to capture a different form of the same language, one of still greater vitality and messiness (from “Sister Lou”):

Then, when you gits de chance,

Always rememberin’ yo’ raisin’,

Let ‘em know youse tired

Jest a mite tired.

Jesus will find yo’ bed fo’ you

Won’t no servant evah bother wid yo’ room.

Jesus will lead you

To a room wid windows

Openin’ on cherry trees an’ plum trees

Bloomin’ everlastin’.

An’ dat will be yours

Fo’ keeps.

Den take yo’ time. . . .

Honey, take yo’ bressed time.

Reading these poems aloud summons their flavor like coffee and hot chocolate do Mexican pastries (which otherwise taste heavy and flat), and since we’re mixing and mashing metaphors up and down this column, let’s go another step:

Not till the lads at San Fernando Gym began rehearsing The Marquez in 2010 – left uppercut, right cross – did the combination make nearly so much sense to us.  We’d seen Juan Manuel employ the combination to surprising effect.  (Hell, a few of us saw him snatch the fighting spirit right out Rocky Juarez in 2007 with a preposterous right-uppercut lead, being hit by which sent Juarez slumpshouldered back to his corner wondering why he even bothered.)

Throwing The Marquez on a bag, heavy or uppercut or double-end, taught you instantly its wisdom – just how far off centerline the uppercut took your head, just how fullcocked it made your lead shoulder, just how symmetrically it set your guard, just how fully it let you put your right shoulder to the cross.  None of us got any of its defensive virtue, though, till we began throwing it to imitate our sport’s finest finisher.  Till we began reading it aloud, as it were.

Something different happened a few years earlier in Phoenix when Donnie Orr, a Canadian middleweight, taught me how to read Yori Boy Campas aloud.  He showed that many of Campas’ lefthooks to the body were actually double hooks, the first to knock the opponent’s right elbow out the way, the second to attack the liver, and not until I’d spent years trying to get the timing and balance right on the heavybag – if you unload with the first, there’s nothing on the second – did I appreciate how much more than a shortarmed attrition fighter Campas was (along with being a delightful and gracious interview).

Reading Chaucer and Brown then shadowboxing your favorite fighters’ greatest hits – what else have you got to do?

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

On Saturday, September 27, 2014, big-name boxing returns to Oklahoma City, as Ivaylo Gotzev and his Epic Sports and Entertainment will proudly present a blockbuster show entitled “Rumble on the River” at OKC Downtown Airpark.

Featured in the dual main events will be the return of a pair of well-known names.

Appearing in separate bouts will be colorful and always entertaining former WBA/WBC Welterweight and former WBC Light Middleweight Champion Ricardo “El Matador” Mayorga (29-8-1, 23 KOs) and hard-hitting former WBC Heavyweight Champion Samuel Peter (34-5, 27 KOs).

Former IBF Light Middleweight champion “Yory Boy” Campas (102-17-3, 79 KOs) will appear in the chief supporting bout.

All three former champions’ opponents will be announced shortly.

Tickets for “Rumble on the River” start at $25 and are available at any Buy For Less location or online at www.airparktickets.com. VIP tables are also available by calling 818.575.0151.

Widely known as “The craziest man in the sport”, Managua, Nicaragua’s Mayorga is a trash-talking street fighter known as much for his habits of smoking and drinking after fights as he is for his tremendous in-ring victories. A pro since 1993, 40-year-old Mayorga has gone to war with nearly every big name in his weight class, including Oscar De La Hoya, Shane Mosley, Fernando Vargas, Vernon Forrest, Miguel Cotto and Felix Trinidad. It was his two victories over the late Forrest that first brought the Nicaraguan strongman into the national spotlight.

Feared for his devastating punching power, Samuel Peter is on the comeback trail. The 33-year-old is originally from Uyo, Nigeria, but now lives and trains in Las Vegas, Nevada. Peter won his title with a TKO 6 over former champ Oleg Maskaev in 2008. He also holds two victories over all-time-great James “Lights Out” Toney and had heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko on the deck three times in their first encounter. He remains the last person to knock Klitschko down.

Campas is a native of Sonora, Mexico. Also known for his devastating power, he began his professional career in 1987 at the age of 15 and won the world championship by knocking out Raul Marquez. Campas made three successful defenses before losing to the great Fernando Vargas.

A full undercard of local and national favorites will be announced shortly.

“I am very excited to be promoting Rumble on the River,” said Ivaylo Gotzev. “We have a well-rested and recommitted Sam Peter eager to return to the ring in one of the main events, plus Ricardo Mayorga, who always entertains the crowd. And supporting them is one of the best overall boxing events in Oklahoma City history. This show’s combination of legendary champions and top local fighters, along with the powerhouse promotional efforts and collaboration of the OKC Airpark, Howard Pollack, and Epic Sports & Entertainment, give us the maximum potential to capture both live and online audiences. Together, we are forging a new boxing tradition and rising-star showcase in Oklahoma City.”

Gotzev says if both Mayorga and Campas get past their opponents, the two former champs have agreed to face each other next.

“Styles make fights and that one would have ‘barn burner’ written all over it, if and when it happens. It won’t be easy for either man to get past their opponents in September, but if they do, we’ve got a war on our hands for the next event!”

On fight night, doors open at 7 pm and the action starts at 8 pm. OKC Airpark is located at 1701 S. Western Avenue in Oklahoma City. All bouts subject to change.

ABOUT EPIC SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Epic Sports and Entertainment Inc. Founder, Ivaylo Gotzev, has spent the last 22 years working with some of the sport’s biggest names, including all-time-great multiple world champion James Toney, former WBC Lightweight Champion Stevie Johnston, former IBF Cruiserweight Vassiliy Jirov, former WBC Heavyweight Champion Samuel Peter, former WBO Heavyweight Champion Shannon Briggs and current middleweight king Gennady Golovkin.

Gotzev’s vision for Epic Sports and Entertainment is to build a stable of domestic and international fighters in both boxing and MMA and develop major worldwide broadcasting and exposure to Epic events.