Top Rank series on ESPN to feature: Pac/Horn, Loma/Salido 2, Crawford/Indongo

[hectari]

Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5GRgdw1g7U

Very high praise from Arum, I agree if he promoted Ward, Ward would have been a lot more famous.

Didnt Ward sign with Roy Jones Jr promotions right out of the Olympics?

[Mitchell Kane]

Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5GRgdw1g7U

That's pretty interesting.

Kind of a leading question by Max, like he knows something.

[GMAN SUPREME]

nice! good ****

[Mitchell Kane]

steve ucnlive
Im told by both sides, that Loma-Salido will be decided on(one way or the other) by tomorrow night... #boxing


steve ucnlive
looking like Staples...


Latimespugmire
Bob Arum has an Aug. 5 hold on @STAPLESCenter for VasylLomachenko Siri_salido fight, I'm told. Not done yet.

[hectari]

steve ucnlive
Im told by both sides, that Loma-Salido will be decided on(one way or the other) by tomorrow night... #boxing


steve ucnlive
looking like Staples...


Latimespugmire
Bob Arum has an Aug. 5 hold on @STAPLESCenter for VasylLomachenko Siri_salido fight, I'm told. Not done yet.

Pacman vs Horn is next week, ESPN better hurry up and promote heavy with commercials

[Mitchell Kane]

When thinking about where some of the ESPN ******ing may lead, it may be instructive to go back to a recent article in Bloomberg about ESPN, BAMTech, and some of their plans for ******ing...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...really-into-it

ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They’re Not Really Into It
As more fans cut the cord and go mobile, the network is busy protecting its cable-TV money machine.

Kosner is planning to roll out a Netflix-like interface for a section of the ESPN app that’s limited to cable customers. It will be customized to user tastes and will put live games side by side with episodes of Van Pelt’s show and ESPN’s documentaries, such as the Academy Award-winning O.J.: Made in America. “The beauty of Netflix to me is that they’ve said, ‘We’re going to make our best stuff available to you anytime you want it,’ ” Kosner says. “They do it brilliantly, but it’s not rocket science.”

LaBerge, the CTO, demonstrates how customers with a DirecTV set-top box can, with a tap of the remote, access a menu that offers all of the company’s channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News, etc.), plus an array of internet ******ing options, including extra games, replays, and the O.J. documentary. In the future, says LaBerge, the network will tailor this menu to a specific viewer’s interests. “It could focus on your favorite teams, on things that we know you like.”

Last August, Disney made a more dramatic move, paying $1 billion for a one-third stake in BAMTech, a ******ing business spun off by Major League Baseball that specializes in distributing live events for sports leagues and other media companies. The same day, Disney said BAMTech would launch ESPN’s first standalone subscription service. The announcement, followed by MLB and Disney’s decision to hire Michael Paull, the former head of Amazon.com Inc.’s digital video unit, to oversee BAMTech, raised the prospect that ESPN would finally offer its flagship channel to customers outside a traditional cable bundle.

Although ESPN executives acknowledge that this could happen years from now if cable continues to decline, the plan for now is more modest. In February, Iger characterized the new service, which doesn’t yet have a name, as “an add-on or adjunct product that consumers can buy on top of what is their normal multichannel package.” Executives at both ESPN and MLB say the offering will likely include a mix of baseball and hockey games—though not the marquee matchups that appear on national telecasts today—as well as competitive video gaming, international sports such as cricket and rugby, and college football and basketball games from outside the major conferences. “I think it’s a learning exercise more than anything,” says BTIG’s Greenfield. “This is really them starting to learn the direct-to-consumer business and dealing with customer service, churn, retention, and marketing.”

[Mitchell Kane]

Pacman vs Horn is next week, ESPN better hurry up and promote heavy with commercials

Yeah, there really won't be much time to promote the Lomachenko-Salido II fight card, so you wonder how well that fight will sell tickets on such short notice (if it gets made).

A laittle reminiscent of some of the problems the PBC had with finalizing fights on short notice...which led to some poor ticket sales and ticket giveaways.

[hectari]

Yeah, there really won't be much time to promote the Lomachenko-Salido II fight card, so you wonder how well that fight will sell tickets on such short notice (if it gets made).

A laittle reminiscent of some of the problems the PBC had with finalizing fights on short notice...which led to some poor ticket sales and ticket giveaways.

Yeah its weird, hopefull next week fight week they talk about the pacquiao horn fight all week on their shows.

I think pac horn will do around 1.2 million viewership, there is no promotion so you cant really say pacs name is **** because there is no promotion for the fight and the deal was last minute. At least the fight is popular and hyped in australia

[Mitchell Kane]

Variety had an article with some quotes from Burke Magnus of ESPN.....

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/espn...ao-1202482685/

“We sort of came across this opportunity to really plant a flag back in the sport of boxing in a big way,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and scheduling, in an interview. “We hope to do more.” ESPN declined to offer terms of its agreement with Top Rank, the promoter of the bout.

Boxing could help ESPN strike a new blow with sports fans. “We have a sense that there’s a deeper reservoir of notable fighters,” said Magnus. “We just feel there’s a little more buzz around boxing than there has been in a number of years, and we think that can carry forward.”

ESPN wants to outdo them and focus more intently on the kind of top-shelf match-ups that might be more the stuff of premium cable. For several years, ESPN showed “Friday Night Fights,” but those broadcasts featured “mostly guys that were up and coming and off the radar, trying to establish themselves, but lower on the food chain,” said Magnus. Getting attention in 2017, he added, “means stepping up in term of quality.”

ESPN is trying to line up sponsorships tied to the Pacquaio-Horn fight, said Magnus, who could not offer specific details. He suggested the network faced a challenge, because the event was a one-off and not tied to other series or broader array of games.

That won’t keep the network from taking a jab at other boxing opportunities. “We are looking at boxing. We are intrigued. One important thing when it comes to boxing is being able to present a high level of fight on a regular basis,” he said. ”If that opportunity presents itself , I think you will see us doing a lot more in the sport.”

[Mitchell Kane]

Lomachenko-Marriaga 8/5, Crawford-Indongo 8/19 on ESPN, per Dan Rafael...


Lomachenko-Marriaga will have Ray Beltran-Bryan Vasquez on the undercard.

Crawford-Indongo will have Oleksandr Gvozdyk-TBA on the undercard, as well as Bryant Jennings, Dillian Whyte, Shakur Stevenson, Nicholas Walters.

http://www.espn.com.au/boxing/story/...n-cards-august

Lomachenko will defend his 130-pound belt against hard-charging former featherweight world title challenger Miguel Marriaga on Aug. 5 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

Two weeks later, on Aug. 19, Crawford will face fellow two-belt world titleholder Julius Indongo at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska, a short drive from Crawford's hometown of Omaha.

Both fights, along with undercard action, will be televised live on ESPN and ESPN Deportes and ****** live on the ESPN app beginning at 10 p.m. ET.

The deal for the upcoming Lomachenko and Crawford fights has been in the works but could not be finalized until the fighters no longer had any obligations to HBO, which had the right to match the ESPN offer. However, HBO allowed its window to match close Thursday without making an offer.

However, after much discussion, Salido ultimately rejected an offer of $720,000, and Top Rank moved on to Marriaga for Lomachenko's third title defense.

"When the financial requests were met suddenly there were other issues like a hand problem, which led to a weight problem, which led to Marriaga. Funny how that happens," Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti said. "So we moved on to trying to secure the best possible opponent at the time, and Miguel Marriaga stepped up to the plate as did [previous Lomachenko opponents] Jason Sosa and Rocky Martinez in the past."

The co-feature will pit former two-time lightweight title challenger Raymundo Beltran (33-7-1, 21 KOs), 35, a Mexico native fighting out of Phoenix, and former interim junior lightweight titlist Bryan Vasquez (35-2, 19 KOs), 29, of Costa Rica, in a 10-round lightweight fight.

In the Crawford-Indongo co-feature, light heavyweight contender Oleksandr Gvozdyk (13-0, 11 KOs), 30, a 2012 Olympic bronze medalist from Ukraine, will face an opponent to be determined in a 10-rounder.

The undercard will also feature several name fighters against opponents to be determined: newly signed Top Rank heavyweight Bryant Jennings (19-2, 10 KOs), 32, of Philadelphia, a former title challenger returning from a 20-month layoff; British heavyweight contender Dillian Whyte, (20-1, 15 KOs), 29, who is coming off a split-decision win against Dereck Chisora in a wild 2016 fight of the year contender in December; 2016 U.S. Olympic silver medalist Shakur Stevenson (2-0, 1 KO), 20, of Newark, New Jersey; and Walters (26-1, 21 KOs), 31, of Jamaica, fighting for the first time since Lomachenko made him quit in the seventh round of a one-sided junior lightweight world title fight in November.