By Steve Kim
It was announced officially on Friday afternoon that Showtime finalized a December 13th tripleheader from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas featuring a welterweight showdown between Amir Khan and Devon Alexander. Rounding out this telecast is Keith Thurman facing Leonard Bundu and WBO junior middleweight titlist, Demetrius Andrade taking on the challenge of Jermell Charlo.
Also on this bill - but not currently scheduled to be on the broadcast - are the likes of former champions Abner Mares and Victor Ortiz.
Stephen Espinoza, the Executive V.P. and G.M. of Showtime Sports and Event Programming explained to BoxingScene.com:
"What people haven't really grasped - and it might be our fault for not explaining it - is when we lost our two scheduled events for October and November, October being (Bernard) Hopkins and November being 'Canelo' (Saul Alvarez), then obviously those fights went away - but because of the timing of when they went away it also left a lot of fighters without fights on the undercards and on 'Extreme' (Showtime Extreme). So we've got a logjam and that explains a little bit of the 'special edition' shows where we've taken care of a lot of the guys who otherwise would've been taken care off on the undercards or 'Extreme' on the October, November shows."
Without cards taking place - and Showtime has had a rather light schedule the past couple of months - boxers can't get to work. On December 12th, Showtime is planning another 'special edition' card from San Antonio that will most likely feature a main event of Erislandy Lara and Ishe Smith and on the 19th the return of Adonis Stevenson in Montreal.
"One sort of side effect of that is when we're getting to December, on our biggest show(December 13th), we really have a lot of names top-to-bottom. So when you're talking about conceivably your fourth or your opening fight or 'Extreme' fights being guys like Abner Mares, it's a pretty stacked card," Espinoza said.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.