Tag: boxing

By Jeremy Wall

Premier Boxing Champions debuted their weekly series on Fox Sports 1 on Tuesday, September 8th with a main event of Austin Trout knocking out Joey Hernandez in the sixth round at middleweight. The broadcast began at 9pm ET and also featured a co-main event with Jorge Lara going to a technical draw with Jesus Rojas at featherweight.

Trout, 29, outclassed Hernandez, 30, in every round before scoring the knockout with a series of body punches in the sixth. Hernandez was getting frustrated early in the fight. In the fourth round, he actually tossed Trout with a pro wrestling bodyslam, which resulted in point deduction.

The score at the time of the knockout was 50-44 for Trout on all three cards.

Trout improved to 30-2 (17 KOs). His two losses were both in 2013 by unanimous decision to Canelo Alvarez and Erislandy Lara, respectively. Trout also holds a unanimous decision win over Miguel Cotto in 2012. Hernandez fell to 24-4-1 (14 KOs).

Hernandez isn’t a terrible journeyman, but he was clearly brought in as a B-side opponent to showcase Trout for PBC’s debut on FS1. Trout is a former WBA Super Welterweight champion. He lost the title to Canelo. He moved up to middleweight in December 2014 and is now 3-0 since the move.

“We got a good win with a knockout. I’m happy to be here. I want to thank the fans for showing up. If you didn’t come for me this time, you will next time,” Trout said in his post-fight interview.

“From the first round, I had no legs. I was conditioned, but the day of the weigh-in I had to lose nine pounds. It is hard to come back from that,” Hernandez said in the post-fight press release. Hernandez weighed in at 156 pounds, but hydrated nearly 20 pounds up to 175 pounds the day of the fight. Trout also weighed in at 156.

The announcers kept pushing the idea of a feud between Trout and Julian “J-Rock” Williams, as they have a beef on Twitter. Williams fought Hernandez in the latter’s last fight back in April. Williams won via unanimous decision. The idea was that now Trout beat the same guy, but knocked him out in the sixth round instead of only winning a decision. Williams (20-0-1, 12 KOs) is scheduled to fight Luciano Cuello (35-3, 17 KOs) on the third PBC on FS1 broadcast, which airs September 22nd.

The three major middleweight stars in boxing, however, are Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, and Gennady Golovkin. They are all signed to promotions that work with HBO and not PBC. Plus, Trout has already lost to Canelo and Cotto anyway. So, it’s not like Trout can really be built into a situation where he is the opponent for a major name at middleweight.

A fight with Williams, however, would be an interesting TV bout. A couple of other possibilities for Trout are matches with WBO Middleweight champion Andy Lee and WBA “regular” champion Daniel Jacobs (the WBA “super” champion is Golovkin, who is generally regarded as the real WBA champ at middleweight). Lee beat Peter Quillin to retain his title on a NBC broadcast in May. Jacobs successfully defended his title against Caleb Truax on Spike TV in April and Sergio Mora on ESPN in August. None of these would be major fights, but they could be something used in a network TV co-main.

Also airing on FS1, Jorge Lara, 24, went to a draw with Jesus Rojas, 28. Lara’s left eye was cut in the third round and his right eye cut in the fifth from accidental headbutts. After the sixth round he was unable to continue fighting due to the cuts. The fight went to the scorecards. All three judges had it 57-57. Lara’s record fell to 21-1-2 (15 KOs) and Rojas’ record fell to 27-0-2 (19 KOs).

The card also included unaired prelims featuring wins by notable prospects such as Eddie Ramirez (10-0, 17 KOs, 23 yo, super lightweight), Ahmed Elbiali (12-0, 11 KOs, 24 yo, light-heavyweight), and Kevin Watts (9-0, 3 KOs, 23 yo, super lightweight), among others.

The fights took place at the Hollywood Palladium, which has a capacity of 3,700. Production was scaled back dramatically. If not for the PBC graphics at commercial breaks, it would be impossible to tell this was a PBC broadcast. The broadcast completely lacked the expensive hallmarks associated with the PBC brand. The arena was dark. The FS1 series is obviously going to be the inexpensive weekly broadcast to showcase prospects, perhaps generating a bit of interest in them before moving them along to fights on NBC, CBS, or ESPN.

The debut of PBC on FS1 had been rumoured for months, but officially announced by Fox in August. Fox was the last major network (besides The CW) not to be working with PBC in some capacity, as NBC and CBS have both broadcast multiple PBC shows and ABC has aired PBC on ESPN. It is unknown whether Fox’s deal with PBC includes broadcasts on the Fox Network, or if the deal pertains only to FS1. PBC’s deal with Fox includes 21 shows running through June 2016. The broadcasts are simulcast on Fox Deportes.

Nothing has been announced regarding PBC airing on Big Fox. With UFC as Fox’s broadcasting partner, it will be interesting the effect that PBC airing on FS1 has on UFC’s contract renewal negotiations with Fox in a couple of years (assuming any effect at all). I had figured Fox sat out of making a deal with PBC when all the other networks were lining up to work with Al Haymon because Fox already had UFC. They also aired Golden Boy, but they never drew great ratings on FS1.

PBC replaced Golden Boy as the boxing content provider for FS1. It was a major blow to Golden Boy, since their FS1 shows were the main way the promotion exposed rising stars to a wider audience. Golden Boy had their final boxing card on FS1 on June 30th, although they’ve continued to air “Golden Boy Classics” on Fox Deportes.

After losing the FS1 deal, Golden Boy announced a three-year deal with Estrella TV. Estrella is a Spanish language network that covers more than 85-percent of Hispanic TV households in the US and is popular in Los Angeles, but only reaches about 33 million homes in total. FS1, by comparison, reaches about 84.8 million homes. Fox Deportes reaches about 21.8 million homes. Estrella, however, isn’t a sports specific station, but a generalized Spanish-language broadcast network.

The final Golden Boy broadcast on FS1 aired on June 26th. It drew 129,000 viewers in the 10pm-12am ET slot. PBC on FS1 received a slightly better timeslot, so we will see what kind of ratings PBC brings compared to Golden Boy.

The new PBC on FS1 series is being packaged as “Toe-to-Toe Tuesdays”. This is not to be confused with Spike’s “Friday Night Lights Out” or TruTV’s “Friday Night Knockout”.

The list of channels that have aired PBC boxing now include NBC, CBS, Spike, ESPN, Fox Sports 1, Bounce TV, NBC Sports, and CBS Sports. At some point PBC will probably also air on ABC. Showtime also airs cards that are de facto PBC cards, although they aren’t officially promoted as such.

The show was hosted by Brian Kenney. Commentary was provided by Gus Hunter and Paulie Malignaggi, the latter being the regular colour analyst for most PBC broadcasts at this point. There was a wide variety of television commercials, which is notable because when PBC debuted earlier this year on NBC and CBS, there were almost no TV commercials because PBC was still trying to sell ad time. PBC shows on those networks now have a variety of commercials, but didn’t debut that way. The FS1 broadcast, however, debuted with ad space already sold ahead of time, which makes it unclear whether this is a time buy, or if it is a time buy and PBC is now having an easier time selling ad space.

The debut on FS1 didn’t receive much media attention. Most of the boxing press in the past couple of days has been focusing on the announcement that Timothy Bradley will fight Brandon Rios later in the year. Also, there has been a lot of press written on how poor ticket sales have been for Mayweather-Berto in Las Vegas this weekend. I’m in Vegas for the fight and I feel no sense of hype in town whatsoever, although that could change since we’re still a few days out and media for fight week just got started Tuesday afternoon with the fighter arrivals at the MGM Grand hotel lobby.

PBC on FS1 returns next Tuesday with Sammy Vasquez (19-0, 13 KOs) vs. Jose Lopez (25-3-1, 15 KOs) at welterweight.

PBC also has shows this week on September 11th on Spike and an afternoon show September 12th on NBC. TruTV also has a Top Rank show September 11th, airing against the Spike show, the latter of which has Adonis Stevenson debuting in Toronto. The week ends with the Mayweather-Berto spectacle on September 12th on pay per view and live at the MGM Grand.

Jeremy Wall can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @jeremydalewall.

By Jeremy Wall

CBS aired a PBC card Sunday, September 6th at 4pm ET. It was a two-fight card headlined by Anthony Dirrell beating Marco Antonio Rubio via unanimous decision in a one-sided showcase fight for Dirrell. Dirrell was coming off a loss to Badou Jack on Spike TV in May, where Dirrell dropped the WBC Super Middleweight title via majority decision in the first loss of his career.

In the co-main, Jamie McDonnell retained his WBA Bantamweight title against Tomoki Kameda via unanimous decision. It was a rematch of a close fight that aired on CBS in May, which McDonnell also won via decision.

The show took place at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi. It was co-promoted by Tom Brown of TGB Promotions and Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing. Matchroom mainly does shows in Britain, but handles the promotion of McDonnell.

Dirrell had no problems with Rubio. Scores were three straight 100-90s. Dirrell improved to 28-1-1 (22 KOs) and Rubio fell to 59-8-1 (51 KOs).

Both Dirrell, 30, and Rubio, 35, were coming into the fight off losses. The difference is that Dirrell is in his prime and Rubio is washed up. Besides being five years older than Dirrell, Rubio looked bad getting made into a drama show by Gennady Golovkin in October. Golovkin knocked Rubio out in the second round after Rubio failed to make weight for the bout.

Against Dirrell, Rubio came into the fight the second heaviest he has ever been, weighing in at 169 ½ pounds. Dirrell weighed in at 169 ¾. Both guys were actually over the 168-pound limit for super middleweight (although no one seemed to care), so this was technically a light-heavyweight bout.

“I love boxing. I will get back in the gym and train for another fight because this is what I love to do,” Rubio said in the post-fight press release.

Boxing has a weird thing going on right where weight limits aren’t being respected and there are a ton of catchweight fights at unusual weights. The truth is that the championships and weights don’t mean as much in boxing as people think they do, unless it is a title held by someone forever, like Mayweather or Wladimir Klitschko. If two promoters get together to create a fight, they are going to have the weight limit as whatever is best for their fighters, unless they absolutely have to make weight for a major title. And even then, as Miguel Cotto has shown by demanding catchweight fights at less than the middleweight limit even though he is a major middleweight champion, weight limits can still be rendered meaningless for title fights.

It is because, of course, that promoters run boxing and decide what happens and not the athletic commissions. On top of that, boxing is so fractured with multitudes of promoters, which means that there is going to be a multitude of strange weight limit fights because the promoters are going to do what is best for business. If a promoter feels forcing their fighter (or fighters) to make weight will be bad for business because it will lead to a lame fight or because the fighter just doesn’t want to do it, they’ll do a catchweight fight instead.

Nevertheless, Rubio was clearly brought in to get Dirrell a win after Dirrell dropped the WBC title to Badou Jack. Against Jack back in May, much of the shoulder programming was based around the idea that Dirrell was a rising star who beat cancer early in his career to become the WBC champion. And then he turned in a mediocre performance and dropped the title to Jack.

Badou Jack is set to make the first defense of his title on the pay per view undercard of the Mayweather-Berto fight on September 12th. He will be facing George Groves. Dirrell would seem to be the logical next opponent for whoever wins the title.

You can see a major difference here comparing the matchmaking of PBC and the UFC. In UFC, if a previously undefeated fighter dropped his title in a close decision to an underdog, the champ would likely get an immediate rematch. If not, in most cases the champ would be paired with someone near the top of the rankings, with the winner being in the mix for the next title shot. That’s not always the case with the UFC, as the attempted Pettis-Myles Jury fight earlier this year illustrates, but that is their typical booking pattern for a former champ who just lost his title.

In PBC, they don’t bother booking the former champ in an immediate rematch or against another top competitor. They book him against a jobber to give him an easy win on network television. Part of that is because boxing is so fractured that many of the top competitors in any given weight class fight for different promoters, making it difficult to frequently put together competitive matches unless the money is there.

If UFC and the major boxing groups (mainly PBC and HBO) were in direct competition with one another (they are in more ways than people think), then UFC has a distinct advantage here because of the nature of their two respective industries. UFC is able to book better fights more frequently, while still protecting their stars if they choose to since UFC calls all the shots, has nearly all the best fighters, and doesn’t have to co-promote with anyone else. In boxing, no group has most of the top fighters and promoters frequently have to work with one another to get a fight made, even when they don’t want to.

The co-main between McDonnell, 29, and Kameda, 24, for the WBA Bantamweight belt was a much better fight than Dirrell-Rubio. McDonnell and Kameda had an exciting fight on CBS in May. This time, the bout wasn’t quite as exciting, but it was just as close. They went to a close decision, with McDonnell scoring a knockdown in the twelfth round. Many people watching the fight, however, thought Kameda won, including colour commentators Paulie Malignaggi and Virgil Hunter. Scores were 117-110, 116-111, and 115-112 for McDonnell.

““I thought I won this fight a lot more clearly than the last fight,” Kameda said in the post-fight press release.

McDonnell obviously disagreed. “I didn’t think it was a controversial decision, because I always felt in control and I believe that I won the fight comfortably.”

McDonnell improved to 27-2-1 (12 KOs) and Kameda fell to 31-2 (19 KOs).

It is hard to say if this will lead to a third bout between the two. The first fight was close and a lot of people thought Kameda won the second bout. Both guys have upped their profiles by having two good fights on network television this year, but I wouldn’t say either of them are stars in the making or anything like that. McDonnell is from Britain, but is not that big of a deal there. Kameda is Japanese, but moved to Mexico at the age of fifteen and has lived there ever since. He speaks fluent Spanish and is popular with the Mexican audience. He also has two brothers who have held world titles in boxing. His brother Daiki Kameda lost a split-decision on Sunday’s show in a fight that didn’t air on TV.

The belt the two were fighting over is not actually that big of a deal. It is the “regular” version of the WBA Bantamweight title. The WBA awards two belts for each weight division, one “super” champion who is widely considered the real champion, and one “regular” champion who is widely considered not a champion at all. I guess they do this to collect more sanctioning fees, although it completely ruins any prestige that most of the WBA belts have. McDonnell retained the regular belt. The super belt is held by Juan Carlos Payano. Payano is also a PBC fighter who beat Rau’shee Warren on a PBC on Bounce show in August.

Being that both Payano and McDonnell are both PBC fighters they could feasibly be matched against one another. I’m not sure how that would work with the WBA, though, since I’m assuming they want two separate champs in each weight division to collect twice the sanctioning fees.

This is where having titles controlled by outside groups doesn’t really work. I know people argue that having titles controlled by sanctioning bodies and not promoters means the promoters can’t manipulate titles. But the sanctioning bodies are manipulating the titles in a way that damages boxing’s reputation anyway. Plus the UFC is a promotion that handles its own titles and frequently has better title fights and better matchmaking compared to boxing.

I think PBC is going about things incorrectly when it comes to matchmaking. They are putting on mostly lousy showcase fights. I don’t have a problem with television squash matches being used to build guys. But if PBC is competition for the UFC and the UFC books competitive fights more often than not, then PBC has to match them. Also, HBO has probably booked better competitive fights this year compared to PBC and HBO is PBC’s top competitor within boxing.

If PBC came in from the start with the mission of revolutionizing boxing so that it becomes more of a business model akin to the UFC, then they needed to book competitive fights frequently during the first year or two in order to get people to believe that this is boxing without politics holding the sport back. Once people believe they are seeing a new way of doing boxing, they can scale back a bit and add in some squash matches.

I understand what they are trying to do in booking squashes like Dirrell-Rubio, because they are trying to create new stars and it gives someone with star potential an easy win. It’s just that PBC is doing it too frequently and they shouldn’t have been doing these types of matches during their first year, anyway.

Also, and this is just me, but I would have started the promotion with PBC title belts and dropped recognition of all the other sanctioning bodies. It would have pissed a lot of people off, but Al Haymon is already pissing a lot of those people off anyway, so what’s the difference. Haymon could then book title fights as he pleases, protect the integrity of the titles, and use the titles to elevate guys and create new stars.

Another problem is that PBC is all over the place. They are on nearly every major network and nearly every major cable sports station. They have fights all over the country with a wide variety of alphabet titles. A lot of the fights don’t lead anywhere. There’s no overarching storyline to many of these bouts and they are just kind of random fights at random times on random television channels.

They have shoulder programming on Spike and on Showtime, but they need a regular magazine show and maybe a “Best Of” show similar to UFC Tonight and other UFC programming on FS1. I think magazine shows are important because they set the official story of fights, so that fans are told why certain fighters are important and why the fights they are involved in matter.

This is where being on every channel imaginable is a disadvantage because PBC is everywhere at once, but in a way that is confusing and random.

The unaired prelims for Sunday afternoon’s show included wins by prospects Miguel Flores (17-0, 8 KOs, 23 yo, super featherweight) and Mario Barrios (11-0, 6 KOs, 20 yo, super featherweight), among other fights.

Ratings for PBC afternoon shows on CBS and NBC have been steady, but have shown a bit of attrition. Ratings have been slightly better for afternoon shows on Saturdays compared to Sundays.

PBC’s last show on CBS was July 18th, featuring Carl Frampton vs. Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. It drew a 0.8 rating on a Saturday afternoon at 4pm ET. Previously, PBC also drew a 0.8 for a Sunday afternoon show on June 21st. Other past ratings on CBS include a 0.9 on May 9th and a 1.1 on April 4th, the latter which was PBC’s debut on CBS. Both of those shows were also on Saturdays.

PBC has also done two weekend shows on NBC. They drew a 0.85 on Saturday, May 23rd and a 0.95 on Saturday, June 6th.

Dirrell’s fight against Badou Jack on Friday, April 24th drew 569,000 viewers (0.2) on Spike, which is not a great rating, but PBC hasn’t been drawing well on Spike, so it was typical.

There is a tremendous amount of boxing on television between now and September 12th, when Mayweather faces Berto on pay per view.

On September 8th, PBC debuts on FS1 with Austin Trout vs. Joey Hernandez. On September 11th, Adonis Stevenson debuts in Toronto versus Tommy Karpency. The same night on TruTV in Las Vegas Top Rank has a show headlined by Oscar Valdez vs. Chris Avalos and Jesse Hart vs Aaron Pryor Jr. On September 12th, NBC has an afternoon show with Cornelius Bundrage vs. Jermall Charlo and Peter Quillin vs. Michael Zerafa, which will be a final push for the pay per view later that night. There’s also a boxing fan convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center the day of the Mayweather fight and probably some other stuff in town that I am not aware of.

Jeremy Wall can be contacted at [email protected] and found on Twitter @jeremydalewall.

By Jeremy Wall

Leo Santa Cruz vs. Abner Mares was a fight so good that ESPN had to show it twice.

Well, actually they showed the fight once on ESPN when it aired live Saturday, August 9th and then a second time on ESPN2 on Tuesday, September 1st at 9pm ET. Santa Cruz, 27, defeated Mares, 29, by majority decision to win the vacant WBA Super World Featherweight title. Scores were 117-111 twice and 114-114. It was Santa Cruz’s third world title in as many weight classes. He also holds the WBC Super Bantamweight title and he will have to give up one of those two titles within the next few weeks.

The fight is a contender for match of the year, coming off the heels of another contender for match of the year on a PBC card on August 14th when Krzysztof Glowacki upset Marco Huck to win the WBO Cruiserweight title. That fight aired on Spike. PBC has been criticized for bad matchmaking for booking mostly squash matches on their free television broadcasts, but the quality of fights in recent weeks has been kind to PBC.

The fight was hyped beforehand as all action and it delivered. Santa Cruz has the reputation for the highest per round punch rate among all boxers, which is an amazing stat. Against Mares, Santa Cruz threw 1,057 punches. Mares threw back 980 punches. That combines to 2,007 punches in total over twelve rounds. Ouch. After the fight both of their arms must have felt like squished tubes of toothpaste.

Each fighter earned $1.25 million for the slugfest. It was a career payday for both. Santa Cruz improved to 31-0-1 with 17 KOs and Mares fell to 29-2-1 with 15 KOs.

Both fighters talked about a rematch after, which would probably do good ratings, or could be used as a co-main on a pay per view. Jose Santa Cruz, Leo’s father and trainer, allegedly wants his son to move on to other contenders, though. Another possibility for Santa Cruz is WBC champ Gary Russell Jr., who is also under contract to Al Haymon.

The fight took place at the Staples Center. They drew 13,109. The crowd was beyond hot. Both fighters are Mexican and from LA. Mares was portrayed as the heel in the pre-fight hype video, talking about how Santa Cruz has great punch stats because he has never faced someone as good as himself. Santa Cruz was portrayed as the guy that was above trash talking.

Santa Cruz fought on the pay per view undercard of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight back in May. The commentary on ESPN was weird in that Joe Tessitore and Teddy Atlas kept talking about how Santa Cruz-Mares was payback to all the fans who thought Mayweather-Pacquiao was a bad fight.

That was odd for two reasons. First, Mayweather-Pacquiao was back in May and Mayweather has moved on to other business. I’m not sure what Santa Cruz-Abner and Mayweather-Pacquiao have to do with one another. Second, Mayweather is fighting on pay per view against Andre Berto on September 12th. It is a poor choice to have your broadcasters talk about how Mayweather’s last pay per view fight sucked when he’s fighting on pay per view again in a week. That doesn’t exactly sell fights.

The rating for Santa Cruz-Mares, however, was great. ESPN averaged 1.217 million viewers for the August 29th live telecast from 10pm to 12:12am ET. It was the third PBC on ESPN show and easily the most watched. The debut show on July 11th with Keith Thurman only drew 799,000 viewers going up against the massive July UFC pay per view featuring Conor McGregor. The second show on August 1st featured Danny Garcia vs. Paulie Malignaggi drew 1.073 million viewers going up against the massive August UFC pay per view featuring Ronda Rousey.

This time, though, there was no UFC pay per view to spoil PBC’s party on ESPN, although the fight did go up against a pay per view fight between Shane Mosley and Ricardo Mayorga that was promoted by Mosley’s company and took place at the LA Forum. Chances are PBC’s success on ESPN killed the Mosley-Mayorga buy rate.

Santa Cruz-Mares was the most watched boxing match on ESPN since a February 22nd, 1998 flyweight title bout between Mark Johnson and Arthur Johnson. Santa Cruz-Mara peaked at 1.614 million viewers.

The fight also aired on ESPN Deportes and set a boxing record for that station with 355,000 average viewers. It peaked at 453,000 viewers.

The September 1st replay on ESPN2 drew 280,000 viewers.

Let us see if PBC can keep their ball rolling into Mayweather-Berto.

*****

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the biggest drawing heel of all time.

Last week Showtime debuted the shoulder programming called All Access: Mayweather vs Berto. Showtime does All Access hype shows for all of their major fights.

Most of the episode focused on Mayweather and how much people hate him, but how he is “TBE”.

At one point in the episode Mayweather grabbed a massive fistful of cash and began shadow boxing while holding it.

Berto was painted as the underdog everyman who always pushes forward.

The marketing gimmick with this fight is clearly that it is Mayweather’s supposed retirement fight and that if Berto beat him then it would be the biggest upset of all-time. The idea for people to tune in is to see the last chance for Mayweather to get his mouth shut.

Whether all of this draws on pay per view remains to be seen.

I don’t believe Mayweather will retire after this fight. I don’t believe that anybody believes that. I don’t believe that Mayweather believes that. Las Vegas Arena opens next year. Mayweather-Pacquiao II is obviously the best boxing match to open the arena, or at least be the first boxing match at the arena if UFC 200 opens it. Also, with the story that Pacquiao’s arm is healed and he is coming for revenge, Mayweather-Pacquiao II ought to draw well on pay per view, no matter what people’s opinion of the quality of their first fight.

I don’t believe that The Money Team will leave all that money on the table.

*****

I’m here in Las Vegas for UFC 191.

I’m not feeling a ton of hype in town for Mayweather-Berto. Maybe the hype train will get rolling after UFC 191 is over on Saturday. They both took place at the MGM Grand.

I’ve talked to a ton of other UFC fans in town, many from around the world, and so far I’m the only person I know staying in town the extra week to see the Mayweather spectacle. I’ve even talked to boxing fans from Europe who are in for UFC 191 and they aren’t staying around for Mayweather. But maybe it is just the people I’ve been talking to.

The final week is what is important for pay per view buys, anyway. We’ll see how the Mayweather people handle that final week and if they can keep the money rolling in.

And isn’t it odd that UFC is choosing to headline a show at the MGM Grand with a Demetrious Johnson fight a week before Mayweather headlines at the same venue?

*****

Here’s a snapshot of the upcoming major boxing schedule on American TV.

Sept 6th on CBS with Anthony Dirrell vs. Marco Antonio Rubio and Jamie McDonnell vs. Tomoki Kameda. This is a rehab fight for Dirrell. Dirrell is coming off a loss to Badou Jack in a title fight on Spike and Rubio hasn’t fought since being knocked out in the second round by Gennady Golovkin last October. McDonnell-Kameda is a rematch for McDonnell’s WBA Bantamweight title. McDonnell beat Kameda by unanimous decision on CBS in May. It was a good fight.

Sept 8th PBC debuts on Fox Sports 1, replacing Golden Boy Boxing. Austin Trout fights Joey Hernandez. It is a showcase for Trout, who is getting a push on TV after last fighting in the untelevised undercard of a CBS show in May. Trout is 29-2 (16 KOs) and 29 years old. His losses were both by unanimous decision to Erislandy Lara and Canelo Alvarez. Hernandez, 31, is coming off a loss to Julian Williams in April, his second loss in his last three bouts. This is the first of what is purported to be a multi-year weekly series.

Sept 11th PBC on Spike with Adonis Stevenson vs. Tommy Karpency and Errol Spence Jr vs Chris van Heerden. It is PBC’s debut in Toronto with the show taking place at the smaller Ricoh Coliseum (where the Toronto Maple Leafs farm team plays). It is promoted by Yvon Michel and co-financed by Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment. And, since it is PBC, it is run by Al Haymon and his Wall Street money. MLSE is the company that owns the Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC the Air Canada Centre, and Ricoh Coliseum. MLSE is co-owned by Bell and Rogers, who are the media conglomerates that between the two of them own most of Toronto. Bell owns TSN (which broadcasts UFC and many PBC shows in Canada) and is in the process of buying the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. Rogers owns Sportsnet, which has WWE in Canada and also the lucrative NHL contract. Rogers also owns the Blue Jays and Rogers Centre. I’m not sure which of these companies owned Rob Ford. Anyway, Adonis Stevenson is the biggest boxing star to come to Toronto since boxing gloves were invented. These are showcase fights for both Adonis and Spence, the latter of whom is considered one of the best prospects in boxing. Adonis is a star in Montreal, but Montreal is not Toronto and boxing’s popularity is cold in Toronto, so PBC is starting from scratch here. They should have come with a better main event if they wanted to make a splash because I doubt they will draw on Adonis’ name alone, unless Toronto turns out to be an untapped market for boxing. The most notable thing here is how Al Haymon was able to merge his Wall Street money with Canada’s Bay Street money and get it all involved in boxing. Corporate leaders seem to all love Al Haymon. Maybe he’s a good kisser.

Also, Sept 11th, Top Rank has a TruTV show at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas with Oscar Valdez vs. Chris Avalos and Jesse Hart vs. Aaron Hart Jr. I might attend this one live.

The afternoon of Sept 12th is PBC on NBC with Peter Quillin vs. Michael Zerafa and Cornelius Bundrage vs. Jermall Charlo for Bundrage’s IBF Middleweight title. Quillin is coming off a draw with Andy Lee on NBC back in May. Zerafa is only 23-years-old and is 17-1 (9 KOs), but is from Australia and has never fought in the US. Bundrage is 42-years-old, but has only lost one fight in his last eight bouts (by majority decision to Ishe Smith). Charlo is 21-0 (16 KOs) and 25-years-old. This one is an obvious passing of the torch, if one considers the IBF Middleweight belt a torch. This show for the most part also obviously serves as a hype show for the Mayweather pay per view later that day.

The night of Sept 12th is Mayweather vs. Berto at the MGM Grand and on pay per view. Other televised bouts are Roman Martinez vs. Orlando Salido for Martinez’s WBO Super Featherweight title and Badou Jack vs. George Groves for Jack’s WBC Super Middleweight title.

And that’s it for boxing’s hype cycle leading up to the Mayweather show.

Jeremy Wall can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @jeremydalewall.