By Steve Kim
With much fanfare it was announced on Saturday night during's HBO's broadcast from the Forum in Inglewood, California that Daniel Jacobs had signed a promotional agreement with Matchroom Sports and had entered into a multi-fight agreement with the network that will kick off in November.
So just what is the full scope of the networks relationship with the promotional firm that is based in the U.K. and headed up by Eddie Hearn?
Peter Nelson, the Executive V.P. of HBO Sports explained to BoxingScene.com - "Eddie is a consummate professional to work with. He's done a magnificent job promoting fighters over in the U.K. He's looking forward to expanding in the United States. We're privileged to be his partner here with Daniel Jacobs and as far as what the future holds, we'll see how that goes in the months to come."
It's been revealed that the November 4th bout in Monaco between Dmitry Bivol and Trent Broadhurst for the vacant WBA light heavyweight title - which takes place on a card promoted by Matchroom Sports - will be shown on HBO. And the bantamweight unification clash between WBA belt-holder Zhanat Zhakiyanov and IBF titlist, Ryan Burnett will reportedly be on the network on October 21st.
It's clear that HBO is trying to fill the void left by Top Rank, which took their content over to ESPN earlier this year.
When asked about the future of his network, Nelson stated - "I think we're really excited about the slate we have. We just had a wonderful 'fight of the year' with 'Canelo' Alvarez and 'Triple G' (Gennady Golovkin) which actually lived up to fans expectations, which was almost impossible to conceive of. In addition to the 'SuperFly' show which was tremendous.
"We have shows coming up in October, November that we're excited about and we'll be announcing something in December, as well. So we feel pretty loaded up right now and we're ready go go in 2018."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
