Frank Warren Discusses BBC Faults, Lennox Lewis, More

By Frank Warren

What on earth is happening with sport at the BBC? Another year and another “treasured” sport heads out of the BBC’s dwindling live sports cupboard.

The latest casualties are the iconic Royal Ascot, Derby and Grand National meetings that will move over to Channel 4 from next year after the BBC were outbid.

Although the Beeb have reduced its coverage of horseracing, these giant race meetings were among the jewels of its sporting crown with Wimbledon, Six Nations and Open Golf, with the majority of football and cricket now being found on other channels. Formula 1, who the BBC broke the bank to snatch away from ITV three years ago, have now lost a lot of it to Sky.

A few years ago I had positive meetings with the then BBC sports boss Roger Mosley about getting boxing back on the channel and they very keen, then I met with Barbara Slater and her “advisors” who were all dead against boxing. 

At the meeting I offered them Amir Khan, James DeGale, who BBC viewers' saw winning the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, Nathan Cleverly, who's last fight against Tommy Karpency was broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live, Kevin Mitchell and Kell Brook but was told that they didn't mean anything. 

I don’t want to hear the old chestnut about lack of money as I offered them the fights to be paid on a scale linked to the amount of viewers, so if the viewing figures were low I wouldn’t have been paid.

Boxing can be a huge draw. When I had Amir Khan on ITV the ratings consistently got higher ratings than programmes at the same time on BBC - including Match of the Day.

A few doom and gloom merchants say boxing is marginalized yet in the last few months promotions have sold out in Cardiff, Glasgow, Sheffield and Hamburg and the smaller venues like York Hall are banged out.

Go back a few years and Barry McGuigan’s against Eusebio Pedroza in 1985 was watched by almost 20 milllon people on the channel - last year’s royal wedding between William and Kate hit the same number. 

Frank Bruno also regularly got big ratings and Lennox Lewis’ surprise defeat to Hasim Rahman in 2001, which was televised live on the BBC, drew a peak figure of 1.4m despite the fight being at 3.15am on Sunday morning which is a great figure for that time.

It’s obvious that boxing doesn’t figure with the decision makers at the corporation and clearly feel that their fingers were burnt with the terrible deal that was struck with Audley Harrison over a decade ago. 

So what are they doing for the people who pay their license fees?  Of course they have the Olympics but the Olympics should be on the BBC, it is costing the nation a fortune for the Olympics to be held in London and they are certainly not doing the license payers a favour by showing it.

The only time they want to seem to showcase boxing is in a bad light like last September with the ridiculous so called expose on 'Cash for Medals' - where the Azerbaijan authorities   were alleged to have paid £6.4m to secure two gold medals at London 2012 - which was later rubbished by a special investigation committee set up by AIBA.

Every year, though, I get bundle of invites send to my office for the boxers I promote to attend their Sports Personality of the Year Award show and in the past I’ve told them to boycott the event because they have no interest in showing your fights.

Yet, in 1999 the BBC trumpeted a “double triumph” for boxing when they crowned Muhammad Ali the Sports Personality of the Century and Lennox Lewis as their winner for that year.

The last three Olympics have seen Harrison, Khan and DeGale emerge as big names and with the London 2012 only a few months away, I’m sure at least one of the boxer’s from Team GB will come through as a star of the games on BBC.

Once the Olympics are over what do sports and boxing fans have to look forward to on the Beeb?

I think the Sports Minister should be asking questions as to where the license fees are being spent.

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R ‘n B star Usher will play the part of Sugar Ray Leonard in a forthcoming movie called Hands of Stone.

The film is about Roberto Duran and will also see the ring return of screen great Robert De Niro - who played Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull - as Duran’s legendary boxing trainer Ray Arcell.

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Could Lennox Lewis be getting itchy feet again?

He’s been retired for nine years’ but the former undisputed world heavyweight champion has been trashing the Klitschko brothers opponents and talking money to make a ring return.

He said for $100 million he’d come back and “For that I would take off my pyjamas and go to the gym.”

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Predictably, Kell Brook did what he had to do against Matthew Hatton last Saturday in Sheffield to win unanimously on points.

Brook came under some stick from Matthew’s older brother Ricky who felt it wasn’t in good taste when he winked at the Hatton family sitting ringside in the final round.

There have been a few Winkers from the Wincobank gym in Sheffield, I recall Naseem Hamed doing the same thing when he put Kevin Kelly on the floor and ended their fight at Madison Square Garden in 1997.

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It looks like Matthew Macklin has missed the boat – he was halted in another tough World Title fight in the eleventh round by Sergio Martinez last week in New York.

He put up a brave performance for the first six rounds and even caused Martinez to get a count in the seventh when his gloves touched the canvas, but the slick, heavy-handed Argie took over from then on.

Macklin has had a number of promoters and trainers in his quest for a World Title.  He has had more trainers than Nike and jumped from promoter to promoter he thought it would be the key to success.  However, I feel had he settled down with a promoter and trainer he may have won a World Title, one thing is for sure he certainly would have got his opportunity in the UK.

For up to date boxing news and reviews visit www.frankwarren.tv