by David P. Greisman

Jim Lampley, HBO’s veteran blow-by-blow announcer for its boxing broadcasts, believes that Showtime long worked toward getting Floyd Mayweather to sign with them before ultimately succeeding this month.

Lampley, who made the same observation others in the industry have, said this in a radio interview with The Mighty 1090 in San Diego with Scott and BR, according to a transcript of the conversation from SportsRadioInterviews.com and a recording of the interview posted on that website.

“This is something that CBS/Showtime have been working on for a long, long time and within the past year they have sharpened their knives and worked even harder than ever before to try to get into this arena,” Lampley said.

“It’s been no secret in the sport that over the course of the past year Showtime has done all or maybe 90 percent of their business with Golden Boy Promotions. They have catered very favorably to fighters who are managed by Al Haymon, Floyd Mayweather’s manager, so this approach took place on a lot of different fronts. They worked as hard as they possibly could.”

Among other items related to this news, Lampley also questioned whether Mayweather will actually fight six times in 30 months, as was mentioned in the news release announcing his partnership with Showtime, and whether those bouts would be competitive or would be fights in which the outcome is known in advance.

More from the Lampley interview can be found at:

http://sportsradiointerviews.com/2013/02/21/boxing-jim-lampley-floyd-mayweather-jr-leaves-hbo-for-showtime/

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow David on Twitter @fightingwords2 or send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com