Garcia-Broner the Centerpiece of Showtime's Summer Schedule

By Steve Kim

Last week , an intriguing match-up at junior welterweight was announced for July 29th between 135-pound world champion Mikey Garcia, who is moving up, and former four division champion Adrien Broner.

The fight will be televised by Showtime, which has had a strong 2017. This bout is the centerpiece of their summer schedule.

"I think so," agreed Stephen Espinoza, the head of Showtime Sports who then explained to Boxing Scene.com - "we were looking at two separate events for Mikey and Adrien and while they were good fights available it wasn't anything that jumped at us and then we all sort of collectively came to the conclusion - why don't we see if the two of them will fight each other? And then we started discussing it, it picked up steam and it only took a few days to get it done."

Garcia(36-0, 30 KO's) stopped Dejan Zlaticanin on January 28th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to win the WBC lightweight crown. Broner (33-2, 24 KO's) gutted out a tough ten round split decision against Adrian Granados at the Cintas Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in his last outing on February 18th.

As of now, the venue has not been decided for Garcia-Broner.

Asked what his network has scheduled the rest of the summer, Espinoza answered - "We'll probably do an August ShoBox but other than that we'll skip August."

There is a talk of a televising the rematch between Leo Santa Cruz and Abner Mares on September 9th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

"We are definitely looking for dates in September for that fight and of course I don't see that fight being anything else other than Southern California - really the Los Angeles area - so I expect that hopefully we can get that fight done and hopefully it'll get done for Showtime sometime in September," Espinoza said.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.