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Australian cable television channel ‘Main Event’ continues to make broadcast fights which aren’t appealing enough to committed boxing fans.
This weekend in the boxing world the focus will be on the grudge match between heavyweight contenders Dereck Chisora and David Haye, two British fighters who recently challenged for the heavyweight title.
It is a rematch of sorts after the two traded bare knuckle blows at the post fight press conference after Chisora lost a decision to WBC titleist Vitali Klitschko earlier in the year.
The other big fight this weekend is the junior welterweight unification fight between Amir Khan and Danny Garcia, two top ten ranked junior welterweights.
Also in action is Australian Anthony Mundine, who makes his US debut as the co-feature in a smaller show in Las Vegas against Bronco McKart, a former contender who is in his mid 40s and hasn’t fought in a meaningful fight since he was stopped by former middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in 2006.
Yet, live on Main Event is the Mundine vs McKart mismatch.
They are showing the second best fight on delay (Khan-Garcia) while the heavyweight grudge match between two men who like to trade heavy leather (providing their opponent isn’t named Klitschko) gets nothing.
Now this isn’t an attack on Anthony Mundine, if I was going to do that I’d bring up the fact that despite claiming to be a four time world champion he’s never defeated a legitimate reigning world titleist, the fact that he has vacated his WBA super middleweight title in order to avoid a rematch with Mikkel Kessler, vacated his mandatory challenger spot at middleweight to get out of facing Gennady Golovkin and just recently vacated his WBA interim title to avoid fighting Austin Trout.
On all three occasions, he stated it was in order to chase big fights in other weight divisions only to take on a variety of domestic contenders and imported trial horses.
This piece is imploring Main Event to stop broadcasting the “champions” and pay attention to the quality match-ups on offer and the chance to actually produce quality fighters through these match-ups.
Now what should happen is the Mundine farce be shown for free, and I know this would reduce Mr Mundine’s purse significantly, but really if he wants to be paid the salary of a top quality boxer, he should be facing top quality opponents!
If any fight is worthy of PPV this weekend, it’s the Chisora-Haye clash. Sure their press conference melee was bad for the sport, but when two fighters hate each other it makes it that much more fun to watch them settle it.
We just had one of the more successful UFC pay per views in recent times last weekend with the rematch between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, a fight that reportedly did more than one million pay per view buys world wide, which was built on the back of the hatred of the two men.
This is one of the few heavyweight fights that has the potential to be exciting. Instead Main Event broadcasts poor fights like Wladimir Klitschko’s recent title defences against 40-year-old ex-Cruiserweight Jean Marc Mormeck and his rematch with fringe contender Tony Thompson (a fighter Klitschko knocked out a few years ago in a fight that was shown on ONE for free). They expect people to pay for the rematch?
If Main Event wishes to show Khan-Garcia on delay, they shouldn’t be asking the public to pay for it. By the time the fight is on, it’s often six hours after it took place. In Khan’s last fight, when he was upset by 6-1 underdog Lamont Peterson, Main Event again showed the fight in delay only for the Fox Sports News channel to be broadcasting the result three hours before the bout even took place!
A lot of it comes down to lack of knowledge by casual boxing fans and I think the solution would be for Main Event to try and educate its market.
If they put a free weekly hour long show outlining the current news in the world of boxing instead of running 24 hour adverts for the often overpriced attractions they show once a week, it would appeal more to the boxing community.
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