By Chris Robinson

The biggest news story of the weekend pertains to Showtime-CBS landing the rights to air the May 7th Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley pay-per-view event from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our colleague Lem Satterfield at AOL Fanhouse, confirmed a report from BoxingScene's Rick Reeno, after speaking with Pacquiao's manager Michael Koncz .

The shrewd Canadian told Satterfield that Showtime had a very serious advantage in their ability to televise a multi-part series, similar to HBO's 24/7, that would air on CBS. The simple fact that CBS is able to reach 115 million homes, as opposed to the 28 million touched by HBO, speaks volumes about the importance of having anything boxing related back on prime-time television.

Larry Merchant just dealing with the fights
 
Upon hearing news of Showtime's recent success in landing Pacquiao-Mosley, I reached out to some of the industry thinkers to get their opinions, but not everyone was in the talking mood.
 
Showtime analyst Steve Farhood and HBO ringside official Harold Lederman both seemed to pass on the topic, understandably. Esteemed author Thomas Hauser revealed that it's up to HBO to pick up the pieces from all of this, and pointed out that the network can do that best by simply making the best matchups possible from this point on.
 
I briefly caught up with HBO's Larry Merchant and he didn't seem too bothered either way.
 
"To me that's just business. I just deal with the fights," he would state.
 
That begged me to ask what exactly he does when not covering a fight live himself. Always a fan at heart, Merchant revealed that he sometimes has it in him to go out to the events as an interested spectator but also can be seen catching the action at home.
 
"It depends on the fight. If there is a fight that is in the Los Angeles area where I live and there are a number of venues here, I might go to it if I'm interested in it. Otherwise I'll watch on television or catch it on some delay."

Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. An archive of his work can be found here, and he can be reached at Trimond@aol.com