I never thought I would see the day when MMA was being on National TV and Boxing isnt

[TR vs. GB]

Arum should go cry and realize how much he has ***ed up since he has taken the sport to premium cable and PPV.

[dan_cov]

There are loads of TV channels now showing boxing.

Primetime.
Channel 5.
premier sports.
Sky sports.
ESPN.

There is even a new channel that shows most of the big fights live & MMA
In fact I recently discovered it and they showed the recent UFC event for FREE as well a few of the recent boxing P.P.V's

I believe it's Sky channel 456 & it's called boxnation, pretty sure they said they will be showing Martinez vs Barker & few other big fights coming up for free

[onechance87]

Arum should go cry and realize how much he has ***ed up since he has taken the sport to premium cable and PPV.

did u not see mma on cbs?

[CubanGuyNYC]

If you live long enough, you get to see everything. That's why they say "never say never." Boxing used to be huge in America, second only to baseball. Who would've ever thought that baseball would take a backseat to football in America? But it has. Boxing is losing ground to MMA. It's conceivable that Americans begin to prefer MMA over boxing in the near future. You can thank a number of factors for that, most notably bad match-ups and bad decisions.

[Forza]

ESPN2
telefutra
FSmiami

all show boxing on my basic cable

[krimzon]

hopefully boxing won't fade into Bolivia

[gdub27]

Boxing is declining in the US because the amateur program is crap. Our best and brightest stars were usually Olympic medalists. If the time and money is put into the amateur program the problem will correct itself.

[intoccabile]

If you live long enough, you get to see everything. That's why they say "never say never." Boxing used to be huge in America, second only to baseball. Who would've ever thought that baseball would take a backseat to football in America? But it has. Boxing is losing ground to MMA. It's conceivable that Americans begin to prefer MMA over boxing in the near future. You can thank a number of factors for that, most notably bad match-ups and bad decisions.

last 3 years straight NFL has topped baseball in the states. People just want different things now.

[Check]

You guys act like National tv is something big. I don't know the percentage but I think it's like 80% or more people have cable. ESPN reaches nearly as many tvs as NBC. This isn't the 1980s!

[ThePrince]

Say what you will about the sport itself, hate it or love it, but the guys running the UFC (MMA basically; the Fertitas and Dana White) are making moves that will help grow the sport exponentially and not just their pockets.

Arum and co. talked a good game about bringing the sport back to the networks but so far they haven't done **** besides show a fight camp and instead of continuing the relationship with CBS, they did what began the 'death' of boxing in the first place- jumped up and snatched the big money carrot that HBO dangled in front of them. Don't see how a 24/7 on CNN at midnight helps the sport but whatever. Duboef claims that this move has no effect on the future of boxing on network tv, CBS specifically:

DuBoef says a key aspect in the ascension of the UFC is the fact they are featured on large stages for public consumption. "If you look at the stories being put on bigger platforms, I mean, we could all look at the success of the UFC as a direct component of what happened when they went to ****e, right? Their product went to a bigger platform and all of a sudden- boom- they hit lighting in a bottle and created a massive business when they were on their heels. We have to look at it that way."

It was thought that having an alliance with Showtime would create a natural pathway for boxing to return to the over-the-air networks (namely CBS). According to DuBoef, going back to HBO/Time Warner does not hurt those chances.

"I don't think it affects it at all," he stated. "I think it's still very bullish. I think that we're playing to larger platforms. We're playing to bigger cable nets. We're playing to bigger terrestrial components, television networks. We're speaking to corporate America in a different fashion today. Corporate sponsors, marketing companies and we're seeing companies like Hewlett-Packard; they got behind Manny Pacquiao and Nike got behind Manny and Tecate and ATT, all of these companies are going to need to create those opportunities to become more prevalent, right? And that has always been the missing link of terrestrial television is that the boxing product got divorced from the sponsors. Sponsors are what pay for terrestrial television content. It doesn't matter what it is. It's $2.5 million for a 30-second commercial in the Super Bowl.

http://www.doghouseboxing.com/DHB/Kim0806a11.htm

And Arum said he expects boxing to be on the networks this year but so far it's been nothing but empty talk while ZUFFA and their people have been making big things happen. Can't do anything but respect action over empty words.