By Steve Kim
While the fight between IBF heavyweight titlist Anthony Joshua and former division ruler Wladimir Klitschko is a done deal for April 29th at Wembley Stadium in England, it's still not clear who will have the television rights in the United States.
Stephen Espinoza, the head of Showtime Sports, explained to BoxingScene.com on Wednesday afternoon:
"We have an exclusive deal with Joshua. We understand - or what we've been told is - HBO has some rights to Klitschko. So there's an on-going negotiation in terms of how to handle that. We negotiated once when the fight was originally scheduled for December 10th and we were able to resolve it, so I'm optimistic we can work something out that works for everybody and allows that to be shown in the United States."
Starting with his title winning effort versus Charles Martin on April 9th, Showtime has televised his last three fights, including this past weekend's three round shellacking of Eric Molina. Klitschko, who for years ruled the division has not seen action since losing to Tyson Fury last November. Still, this fight figures to garner plenty of attention.
"It's arguably the biggest heavyweight fight in at least a decade,'' opined Espinoza.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
