Post by themagi on Jan 24, 2015 23:28:12 GMT 1
This has been on the cards for a while now. At one point it was even rumoured that GLORY would be making way for this but fortunately that isn't the case. Broadcasts will go down on Friday's, apparently.
This is going to be a baby of Al Haymon, who last week announced a similar deal to be aired on NBC. It appears that both SPIKE's and NBC's shows will be entitled "Premiere Boxing Champions". NBC, naturally, will be the flagship show with SPIKE playing the role of Smackdown! to "The Peacock's" RAW, if you can excuse the wrestling comparison. Haymon boasts a pretty deep stable of over 150 fighters worldwide. Andre Berto will headline the maiden voyage of the SPIKE portion, against Josesito Lopez.
This is getting mostly a thumbs up from boxing fans as far as I can gather, but I'm going to reserve judgment until we're a few shows in. Haymon is a master of packaging chicken sh*t as chicken salad but now he has to deliver as his own neck is finally on the line. He has conjured up $100m of cash from investors (the majority of which will be ploughed into the NBC venture as he is effectively buying the TV time from NBC as well as paying the fighters on his shows, as opposed to Showtime or HBO paying his boxers which is how he's been able to do business for the past few years. He's hoping to make his money back through commercials)
One final thing. At the (invitation only) press conference to announce the NBC deal, for which Haymon didn't appear to be present (he's not known as "The Phantom" for nothing, you know) a big deal was made about USADA being the drug testing agency that Haymon Boxing will be using. This is presumably a placating move as in the past USADA have actively gone out of their way to ensure that fights involving Haymon managed boxers have gone ahead even though at least one of the fighters has failed a pre fight drug test.
This is going to be a baby of Al Haymon, who last week announced a similar deal to be aired on NBC. It appears that both SPIKE's and NBC's shows will be entitled "Premiere Boxing Champions". NBC, naturally, will be the flagship show with SPIKE playing the role of Smackdown! to "The Peacock's" RAW, if you can excuse the wrestling comparison. Haymon boasts a pretty deep stable of over 150 fighters worldwide. Andre Berto will headline the maiden voyage of the SPIKE portion, against Josesito Lopez.
This is getting mostly a thumbs up from boxing fans as far as I can gather, but I'm going to reserve judgment until we're a few shows in. Haymon is a master of packaging chicken sh*t as chicken salad but now he has to deliver as his own neck is finally on the line. He has conjured up $100m of cash from investors (the majority of which will be ploughed into the NBC venture as he is effectively buying the TV time from NBC as well as paying the fighters on his shows, as opposed to Showtime or HBO paying his boxers which is how he's been able to do business for the past few years. He's hoping to make his money back through commercials)
One final thing. At the (invitation only) press conference to announce the NBC deal, for which Haymon didn't appear to be present (he's not known as "The Phantom" for nothing, you know) a big deal was made about USADA being the drug testing agency that Haymon Boxing will be using. This is presumably a placating move as in the past USADA have actively gone out of their way to ensure that fights involving Haymon managed boxers have gone ahead even though at least one of the fighters has failed a pre fight drug test.
