By Steve Kim
The unification bout between WBA champion George Groves and IBO champion Chris Eubank Jr, which takes place on February17th at the Manchester Arena in the UK, sold-out in seven minutes. This match-up is part of the semi-finals of the World Boxing Super Series (WBSS) super middleweight tournament.
There's no questioning just how much interest there is in this event in Europe.
The question that many American boxing fans is will this fight, along with the other semi-final bouts of the WBSS (which also has a cruiserweight tourney) be televised on a major platform in the States? The later half of the quarterfinals were carried by the Audience Network.
A frustrated Richard Schaefer,the Chairman of the Americas for Comosa AG/WBSS, told BoxingScene.com:
"It really is amazing that there's not more interest from a TV point of view and one has to really scratch his head and wonder is it boxing politics at it's worst because there's some interest for TV networks, actually from a couple of places for the tournament. Audience was certainly encouraged to have very, very strong ratings and so there's an interest from certain players," Schaefer said.
"But what is surprising is that the bigger platforms are not really jumping on this because I think there are some really mouth watering match-ups."
Thus far, both HBO and Showtime, who have started to announce cards for 2018 have not shown any indication that they will be broadcasting the remainder of the World Boxing Super Series, which also has fights like the mouth-watering WBA, IBF unification between two undefeated feared punchers, Yunier Dorticos and Murat Gassiev, scheduled for their cruiserweight bracket, which are greatly anticipated by fans.
"So I'm surprised and I can only think that it's boxing politics," stated Schaefer.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.