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Timing is indeed everything, especially if you're super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, who will get an unexpected opportunity for American TV viewers to see him on HBO in his next title defense.
When the Welshman re-injured his left hand in June, he was forced to withdraw from a July 8 bout against Glen Johnson, which was supposed to serve as Calzaghe's HBO debut. His previous fights that aired in the United States had been on HBO rival Showtime.
With HBO's calendar jammed for the rest of the year, the network had no room for Calzaghe until Monday, when it made a deal to air Calzaghe's Oct. 14 title defense against Sakio Bika.
The "Boxing After Dark" bout will air on same-day tape delay (11 p.m. ET/PT) from Manchester, England, where Calzaghe, the longest-reigning active champion in boxing, will make his 19th title defense at the MEN Arena.
"I can confirm that, yes, we have a deal," said Jay Larkin, the former Showtime boxing chief now serving as the U.S. adviser to promoter Frank Warren's Sports Network. "After the injury to Joe, we believed the opportunity for Joe to fight on HBO in '06 had passed. But through a variety of occurrences and other fights falling out, we had an opportunity to do this."
On Friday, HBO canceled its Oct. 14 broadcast when it couldn't agree with promoter Lou DiBella on the lineup of fights.
DiBella's final proposal, one of numerous matches he suggested, included two super middleweight bouts, Peter Manfredo vs. Joe Spina and Allan Green vs. Jerson Ravelo. That card will instead air on ESPN2 on Oct. 14 against HBO's telecast.
But after canceling the card, HBO changed its mind, went looking for a replacement and wound up with Calzaghe-Bika.
First, HBO tried to cut a deal to televise the Oct. 14 Mikkel Kessler-Markus Beyer super middleweight unification bout from Denmark on tape delay but couldn't reach an agreement. That left Calzaghe-Bika as the obvious replacement, especially considering that HBO had spent months working on a deal for a Calzaghe fight before his summer injury.
HBO hoped that the Oct. 14 card would include blue-chip lightweight prospect Amir Khan, the 19-year-old 2004 British Olympic silver medalist. However, Khan is a ****** and won't fight until November or December because he is taking a break during the ****** holy month of Ramadan.
HBO, however, might show the cruiserweight title bout between long-reigning beltholder Johnny Nelson and rising contender Enzo Maccarinelli.
As part of its deal with Sports Network, HBO has the right to televise the fight but won't make a decision on how much, if any, of it will air until it sees how the bout plays out.
Calzaghe (41-0, 31 KOs) unified titles in March with a dominant decision victory against Jeff Lacy on Showtime. The fight with Bika will be the first for Calzaghe, 34, since that victory launched him into the pound-for-pound rankings.
Bika (20-1-2, 13 KOs), nicknamed "The Scorpion," is a former Olympian from Cameroon based in Australia. The 27-year-old challenged for Beyer's 168-pound title in May. The fight was even on two scorecards when it was halted in the fourth round and ruled a technical draw because an accidental head butt left Beyer cut and unable to continue.
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