Similar Showtime Championship Boxing, CBS Sports Spectacular, Major League Baseball, Premier Boxing Champions, CBS Olympic broadcasts | ||
Boxing on CBS is a television boxing show, produced by CBS Sports.
Contents
History
CBS' earliest experience with boxing dates back to 1948, with the debut of Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts. The program, featuring blow-by-blow commentator Russ Hodges, lasted through 1955.
CBS had a renewed interest in boxing after losing the National Football Conference package to Fox following the 1993 season. In 1994, they had a new series of fights on Saturday or Sundays under the Eye on Sports banner. Tim Ryan (blow-by-blow) and Gil Clancy (color) were the commentators during this period. CBS continued airing boxing on a somewhat regular basis until 1998, by which time they had the NFL (after acquiring the American Football Conference package from NBC) and college football back on their slate.
On the afternoon of December 15, 2012, as part of a larger marathon of live boxing events being broadcast that day by sister premium network Showtime, CBS broadcast Showtime Boxing on CBS—which featured a main event between Leo Santa Cruz and Alberto Guevara from Los Angeles. The telecast, although delayed due to an overrunning college basketball game, was seen by approximately 1.5 million households. It marked the first live broadcast of a boxing event on CBS since 1997.
In February 2015, CBS Sports reached a deal with Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions to air a series of eight, Saturday afternoon cards (branded as PBC on CBS). CBS Sports Network also aired shoulder programming for Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao. In 2016, CBS Sports Network began to pick up a larger number of events from smaller promoters such as Roy Jones Jr. and Pep Gomez.
On June 25, 2016, as part of PBC, CBS broadcast Showtime-produced coverage of a card featuring a WBC welterweight championship fight between Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter, marking the first boxing event broadcast on CBS in primetime since 1978.
Notable moments
Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, was brought in to be Sugar Ray Leonard's trainer and manager. Long-time coaches Janks Morton, Dave Jacobs and lawyer Mike Trainer made up the rest of Leonard's team. Promoted by ABC-TV as their replacement for the aging Ali, Leonard made $40,000 for his first professional fight (then a record) against Puerto Rican Luis Vega. The fight was televised nationally on CBS-TV, and the novice Leonard won by a 6 round unanimous decision.
For decades, from the 1920s to the 1980s, world championship matches in professional boxing were scheduled for fifteen rounds, but that changed after a November 13, 1982 WBA Lightweight title bout ended with the death of boxer Duk Koo Kim in a fight against Ray Mancini in the 14th round of a nationally televised championship fight on CBS. Exactly three months after the fatal fight, the WBC reduced the number of their championship fights to 12 rounds. It was also the last fight to air as part of strike replacement programming on CBS because of the NFL strike, which ended three days later.
A then 14-0 Oscar de la Hoya appeared on a December 10, 1994 card for CBS.
The last time CBS aired a live boxing event prior to 2012, was on January 20, 1997, when then-middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins knocked out Glen Johnson in the 11th round.