By Steve Kim
The night of May 2nd will be a historic one in many respects when Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao finally meet at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. One of the issues that had to be settled for this fight to come together was how the broadcast would be handled by Showtime ( which has a long-term exclusive deal with Mayweather) and HBO( long the home of Pacquiao).
It would be best to call the broadcast 'collaborative' as it will be as split crew of announcers (said to be the team of Jim Lampley, Al Bernstein and Roy Jones) much like the way it was in 2002 when HBO and Showtime got together to make the fight between Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson.
"It absolutely is...just from the talent to the way it's marketed, to the way it's promoted," said Stephen Espinoza, the Executive V.P., G.M. of Showtime Sports and Event Programming at Wednesdays gala press conference - which included a red carpet - for Mayweather-Pacquiao at L.A Live.
"It's a split team down the middle," he explained. "There were some issues that are resolved some what clumsily and it's a little bit of 'split the baby' and that's sort of where our preview shows ended up. It's not the ideal, it's just the way we had to do it to reach a consensus. But overall, it's very much a collaboration even more so than Tyson-Lewis."
In terms of doing an All-Access show, as they customarily do before big fights, Espinoza explained to BoxingScene.com - ''What we're going to do is similar to All-Access. For a variety of reasons, mainly due to trying to minimize the intrusions on the fighters camps. HBO will have primary access to Pacquiao, we'll have primary access to Mayweather. In other words, that means we wont have a lot of access on Pacquiao, they won't have a lot on Mayweather on their show.
"The way I'd describe it is that it's something like an All-Access, except not quite as 50-50 because we won't have as much access to the other side."
Espinoza said that other programming announcements surrounding this event will be forthcoming.
Steve Kims is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
