Brandon Figueroa and Mark Magsayo will square off Saturday night in the third “Showtime Championship Boxing” main event since February 11.
Showtime’s tripleheader from Toyota Arena in Ontario, California, will be the premium cable network’s fourth of nine boxing broadcasts during a 10-week span. That packed schedule will conclude with what could stand as the biggest pay-per-view fight of 2023, Gervonta Davis versus Ryan Garcia on April 22 at a venue to be determined in Las Vegas.
Stephen Espinoza, Showtime’s president of sports and event programming, informed BoxingScene.com that there will be numerous additions to the network’s schedule in the coming weeks to what Showtime has already confirmed. Showtime and BoxingScene.com are both owned by Paramount Global.
“I don’t know that we’ve ever done 14 shows in the first six months of the year before,” Espinoza said. “That’s a really heavy number. That’s sort of the subtle point, but I think the more explicit points are the quality and quantity and variety. High-quality matchups, fun matchups, a lot of them, everything from ‘ShoBox’ to the biggest pay-per-view of the year.”
Beyond Saturday’s show headlined by Figueroa and Magsayo in a fight for the WBC interim featherweight title, the main events Showtime will air over the next four months include Tim Tszyu-Tony Harrison (March 11), David Benavidez-Caleb Plant (March 25; pay-per-view), Shinard Bunch-Bryan Flores (April 7; ‘ShoBox’), Sebastian Fundora-Brian Mendoza (April 8), Davis-Garcia, Alberto Puello-Rolly Romero (May 13) and Carlos Adames-Julian Williams (June 24).
“This incredibly busy schedule,” Espinoza said, “nine boxing events in 10 weeks, I think that implicitly says that we remain committed to the sport and are very enthusiastic about what it does for the network.”
The highest-profile fight that neither Showtime nor its primary partner, Premier Boxing Champions, have announced is Errol Spence Jr.-Keith Thurman. Spence and Thurman are expected to headline another pay-per-view show, but neither the date nor the venue for what is expected to be a 12-round, 154-pound bout have been finalized.
“As strong as this schedule is and as enthusiastic as we are about it,” Espinoza said, “there are a number of big-name fighters who have not finalized fights to be put on the schedule. The Charlos, Spence, Thurman, [Jaron] Ennis, [David] Morrell, Isaac Cruz, Frank Martin. There are a large number of big-name fighters that we’re working on fights for and we’re close to finalizing, so there will certainly be additions to the schedule in the very near future.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.