By Steve Kim
As Showtime rolled out their winter slate of fights, one date that wasn't mentioned was the December 10th title defense of IBF heavyweight belt-holder, Anthony Joshua (17-0, 17KOs), who is scheduled to fight in Manchester, England in what will be his second defense of that championship.
But whoever he ends up facing that night, Showtime will be televising it.
"What Eddie (Hearn) has told us is that the three likely candidates - in no particular order - are Bryant Jennings, Eric Molina and David Price. Then I think the intention is to continue discussions for a Joshua-(Wladimir) Klitschko fight for March or possibly April. I think that would quite possibly be the biggest heavyweight fight in a decade," said Stephen Espinoza, the Executive V.P. and G.M. of Showtime Sports and Event Programming.
It was hoped that this match-up [between Joshua and Klitschko] would take place on December 10th but fell apart for various reasons.
One of the hurdles to that pairing was that Klitschko had a long-standing relationship with HBO, while Joshua just recently entered into a deal with Showtime.
According to Espinoza - "[this situation] had been worked out but it's something that we're going to leave locked in the vault because ultimately the fight didn't happen. So I don't think anyone really wants the arrangement out there for presidential purposes. So going forward, they support Klitschko and we've got a relationship with Joshua and they're both important but I'm confident that things will be worked out and cooler heads will prevail and there will be a way to do this so that fight gets exposure in the U.S."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
