RACHEL’S REVIEW of Premier Boxing Champions on NBC

Published

10 years ago

March 9, 2015

A Review: Premier Boxing Champions

On the evening of Saturday, March 7th, those sitting in front of the television were treated to something that hasn’t happened in decades: boxing in primetime on network television.

The Overview

Al Haymon, a manager/advisor in the sport of boxing, bought airtime on NBC to showcase fighters in what has been titled Premier Boxing Champions (PBC). Together, Haymon and NBC put together a slick production featuring celebrity commentators, a big social media campaign and plenty of advertising to help build up the fights. In the main event, we saw Keith Thurman handily win over Robert Guerrero, and the undercard featured Adrien Broner easily taking a decision over John Molina Jr.

What This Could Mean for Boxing

As a real boxing fan, as opposed to a fair weather fan, I have a lot to say about this event. I’m familiar with all there is to love about boxing, and unfortunately all there is to despise. But after sleeping on it, and several long discussions with my husband, I’ve come away a little excited for one of the many possible futures for boxing.

At first glance, this event seems a little odd. What businessperson buys airtime to showcase an event on network television? Essentially, Haymon is paying NBC to air boxing, and this only makes sense if Haymon is some gazillionaire with money burning a hole in his pocket. But Haymon is a businessman, so making a profit is front and center. When you buy airtime, you’re taking the burden off of the network to go out and find sponsors. So we have to ask: Is this venture sustainable?

But that thinking is short-term. We have to think long-term. What possibly could be Haymon’s angle here?

Well, there are several angles, and for the sake of brevity I’m just going to focus on the most promising (believe me there’s an angle here that results in the PBC as a sanctioning body…please, just no).

So, let’s say that the first year of PBC on NBC is a success. Quality fights combined with a slick production bring in a slew of new fans to the sport. Now, these new fans aren’t willing to pay an extra dime for premier cable packages or PPVs. They’re satisfied with what they get on NBC. Sponsors start knocking on NBC’s door–they have products to sell and have taken notice that there’s an audience to sell to, and because of the slick production that’s kept to a PG rating they’re not scared to buy ad space.

So where do fighters want to fight? On a premier channel, where they’ll fight in front of the boxing fans that are tried and true, but a small group? Or on network television in front of the masses and the true fans? Obviously, you go where the people are, and that’s on network television. It doesn’t take too much for me to see a big move away from HBO and Showtime to network television.

Essentially, what will happen over time is that PBC on NBC becomes king of the hill so to speak, and everything else peters out until all we’re left with is PBC. At this point, PBC is now the equivalent of the NFL, MLB, NHL, etc. and Al Haymon is the commissioner.

This is kind of what I’ve always wanted. Imagine it: one champion in each weight class, the fights that need to happen actually happen, one set of rules for all. It’s blissful.

The key to this is the first year of PBC being a success. What does that look like? It looks like new fans, and a lot of them. The influx of new fans here has to be substantial.

What Worked and What Didn’t

So, what worked last night and what can NBC and company improve upon?

The production was slick. It felt big–like a real sporting event. We had familiar faces for our commentating team: Al Michaels and Marv Albert, both talented sports broadcasters, albeit a little rusty when it comes to boxing. We also had members of the boxing community on the commentating team: Sugar Ray Leonard, Laila Ali and BJ Flores all lended authenticity to the event. The quality of what we saw on our screens was great; we weren’t dealing with dropped feeds or losing high definition. NBC also went all out with the sound: Hans Zimmer was hired to try and give this event a feeling of importance and expectation (you shouldn’t really notice the soundtrack at these types of events, but hey, maybe the first time we heard the score for the NFL on FOX it was abrasive too).

They spared no expense in setting up the venue. Remember the Friday Night Fights where we could barely hear Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore because the ring itself was rocking and banging under the weight of the fighters? None of that on Saturday night. The ring was great, the lighting was great and all the extras (ring-walk ramps, Al Michaels’ desk, screens) were of good quality.

The time of the event. Boxing has tortured us tried and true fans for years, forcing hardworking Americans to stay up much later than necessary. Guess what boxing? Your fan base isn’t teens and twenty-somethings without jobs. NBC began their broadcast at 7:30 central time. When the event was over, I actually stayed up longer chatting about what happened instead of hurriedly brushing my teeth and falling into bed. You want people talking about your event.

The main event was a good fight. Sure, after seeing the sleep-inducing match that was Broner vs. Molina, the main event seemed like the greatest fight ever. But after sleeping on it, I think we can all agree it was a fun fight that Thurman easily won. (Please disregard this tweet from me last night: GREAT FIGHT! To my credit, I originally had three exclamation points on that, and scaled it back to just one.) New fans got to see two fighters who were active most of the rounds, a knockdown, and by the end, Guerrero found a way to get inside and give us some fun action. Oh, and let’s not forget: THE HEMOTOMA.

Choosing to forgo the ring card girls was a good choice as well. There’s no way you’re bringing in the masses while reducing four women to a few body parts. Out of all the major sports, boxing is the worst when it comes to objectifying women.

Last night there were no belts. This plays into the scenario above, where PBC becomes the equivalent of the NFL, MLB or NHL. Either PBC is going to become another sanctioning body with a belt to sell, or they become the only game in town. That’s the only choices given the fact that they refused to showcase the WBA belt Saturday night.

There was a lot to fix in this production too.

Marv Albert was clearly very rusty. He had trouble seeing the specifics of the action. What I mean by that is this: He could see that there were punches, but he couldn’t see what kind of punches they were (jab, uppercut, hook, who cares!?) and if they were even landing. I could never call a fight–there’s no way I could keep up with the speed of the action. But this is Marv Albert’s job, so he definitely needs to spend some time watching fights and calling them, preferably on his own time and not on mine.

NBC might want to take their commentating team to some local shows for practice. If I were them I would get in some real time for my commentating team, and even try out different combinations. Maybe Laila Ali needs to be part of the play-by-play team. Maybe Al Michaels should also join that play-by-play team and we lose Marv Albert. Maybe Sugar Ray Leonard is the guy you can pull in when you want and ask some questions, but he’s not there the whole time. Maybe you actually put a mic on Steve Farhood because he has more knowledge of boxing as a commentator than all five of the other people combined. Just some ideas. And can you imagine the stellar marketing move it would be to have Laila Ali as one the main commentators? Granted, she would need to be good at it, but if she could pull it off–wow.

If you’re going to have former boxing champions as commentators you should probably spend some time at the beginning of the broadcast teaching your new fan base who they are. Unless I’m talking to someone in their sixties, no one I talk to knows any names in boxing except Ali, Tyson, Foreman, Holyfield and Mayweather. I’m not even exaggerating.

The ring walks came across as odd. I didn’t mind that the fighters were alone. I get why NBC wanted this–they needed to exercise control, and I think we can all agree that ring walks have gotten a little out of control as of late. To be honest, I don’t come to boxing for ring walks, so this isn’t really a deal breaker for me. What NBC has to fix, is the fact that the night’s ring walks stuck out like a sore thumb. You can’t have that. An alternative might be to show the television audience a video of the fighter rather than he/she walking to the ring.

Adrien Broner. Do I even need to say anything else? Wow. Why would you take what’s on the bottom of the boxing barrel and showcase it for new fans on network television? Unless Haymon is planning on hiring a life coach for Broner, let’s have less of him on NBC. Actually, let’s just have none of him on NBC.

The fights themselves could have been better. I don’t know if Al Haymon made these fights, but I’m assuming he did, and I think we can all agree that matchmaking is not his forte. The main event turned out to be a solid bout for new fans. You got a knockdown, some blood and lots of activity. I would have appreciated an undercard with two bouts that included well-matched fighters instead of named fighters. I don’t care if their records are 15-10, give me two guys whose styles give us fireworks and I’m happy. If the future of PBC is Haymon boxers fighting tomato cans, you can count me out, as well as the rest of America because they’re not tuning in for that. Remember, for them these aren’t even “name” fighters–they don’t know who these guys are!

All in all, I think we can agree that PBC has the potential to be good for boxing. At the very least, it will just be more of the same, and in that case I’ll still be here week in, week out watching guys leaving it all in the ring.

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Rachel McCarson

TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

Published

6 days ago

April 12, 2025

David A. Avila

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In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.

No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.

“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.

Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.

Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.

In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.

That was a bad sign for Stanionis.

Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.

In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.

It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.

Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.

After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.

Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.

“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.

Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.

Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.

“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”

Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.

“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.

The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.

“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.

Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.

Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.

Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.

In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.

“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”

In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.

“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”

After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.

Photo credit: Matchroom

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