Premier Boxing Champions brought boxing back to primetime network television on Saturday night, with its debut PBC on NBC card. The much-anticipated, and heavily hyped and advertised event, was headlined by the welterweight showdown between Keith Thurman and Robert Guerrero.
So, what did we learn about Premier Boxing Champions?
PBC was designed to try to make boxing more appealing to the public at large, offering a glitzy event experience. Entertainment mastermind Al Haymon was pulling out all the stops and getting the chance to build boxing into what he always envisioned it should be. Ultimately, I was left with the impression that PBC went over the top, more overly-Produced Boxing Cinema, than a fight card.
I kept on hearing about music scores and video screens and wasn’t sure why that mattered. (For the record, and the nth time, the music was composed by Hans Zimmer with 100 London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic musicians. 32 cameras were used to support the “Roundabout 360 degree view” of the action. The ring was decked out with The Ring of Honor: 75 feet in diameter and 8 feet high, and the Tale of the Tape, two 12×21 foot LED screens elevated above the ring.)
So there you go. Did any of that matter for you? Did you speak to anyone who wasn’t a boxing fan before, but was so impressed with the setup of the event that they are now?
It felt, at times, like watching the spliced together faux fight programming from The Contender, and wouldn’t you know it, there was Sugar Ray Leonard once again too. The network brought out other big names for Premier Boxing Champions, including Al Michaels and Marv Albert. But it all felt very forced. If this truly does bring in a larger crowd, I’m all for it, but I’m not convinced it will.
Of course, boxing is always at the mercy of the fighters themselves, and they didn’t leave the sensational, star-building impression that Premier Boxing Champions and NBC must have been hoping for.
Thurman vs. Guerrero was a solid match-up of top 10 welterweights. Thurman won the fight handily though, in near-shutout fashion, and wasn’t able to seal the deal with his vaunted “One Time” power. That was more due to Guerrero’s chin than his efforts though, and he scored a knockdown in Round 9. Official scorecards read 120-107, 118-109 and 118-108.
Adrien Broner played keep away from John Molina Jr. for 12 yawner rounds. This was a fight setup for Broner to look good in, and while he won easily, he didn’t put on an impressive performance. Scorecards read 120-108, 120-108 and 118-110 for Broner.
Abner Mares also returned to action with a 10-round decision over his overmatched opponent in a rather uneventful fight.
More action in the ring assuredly would have left a better impression. But better matchmaking and more intriguing fights would do much of that on its own. We’ll see where Premier Boxing Champions goes from here.
