ESPN will bring plenty of live boxing back to its airwaves during the second week of June.
Promoter Bob Arum told BoxingScene.com that the network will televise three live cards that week. The first card will be broadcast June 9, a Tuesday night, followed by live telecasts the nights of Thursday, June 11, and Saturday, June 13.
Arum isn’t at liberty to discuss specific fights for those cards, but unbeaten WBO featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson is expected to headline the June 9 show. The 22-year-old Stevenson (13-0, 7 KOs), a 2016 Olympic silver medalist from Newark, New Jersey, could meet Mexico’s Rafael Rivera (27-4-2, 18 KOs, 1 NC) in a 10-round, non-title fight that night at the junior lightweight limit of 130 pounds.
Regardless, June 9 will mark the beginning of a flurry of live boxing following nearly three months without it in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arum anticipates ESPN airing at least two live boxing shows per week during June and July. Those cards probably all will be held from the same undetermined MGM Resorts International property in Las Vegas, largely for the sake of safety because staging such shows will require extensive, expensive COVID-19 testing.
“Todd [duBoef] and Brad [Jacobs] have been on the phone with ESPN, laying out the schedule for June and July,” Arum said, referring to Top Rank’s president and chief operating officer, respectively. “What they plan is that probably next week we’ll announce the three events we’re gonna be doing, starting June 9th. We’re gonna do three events that week. And most of the weeks we’ll have two, but some will have three.
“ESPN has asked us not to announce individual events. They wanna announce the events as a weekly package. They’re paying the money. We don’t have any ticket sales to rely on. So, whatever they’re asking, we’re gonna go along with.”
Arum expects that his company and ESPN will soon finalize an agreement with a Las Vegas venue.
“Right now, they’re all being planned for one place,” Arum said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how it will end up being, because they may very well get innovative. For example, if we’re in Nevada, maybe they determine that they wanna do an event or two events from a spectacular setting in Nevada, that type of thing. All of the cosmetic parts of this, we have punted to ESPN.”
As BoxingScene.com reported Monday, Top Rank also is in the process of scheduling shows ESPN will televise the nights of Tuesday, June 16 and Thursday, June 18. BoxingScene.com also reported Monday that Top Rank’s June 11 show will include a 10-round, 128-pound bout between Las Vegas’ Jessie Magdaleno (27-1, 18 KOs) and the Dominican Republic’s Yenifel Vicente (36-4-2, 28 KOs, 1 NC), and that its June 18 card will include a 10-round, 141-pound fight that’ll pit Puerto Rico’s Jose Pedraza (26-3, 13 KOs) against Brooklyn’s Mikkel LesPierre (22-1-1, 10 KOs).
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.