Boxing on NBC is the de facto title for NBC Sports' boxing television coverage.[1]
On July 2, 1921, NBC's future owner RCA and its Hoboken, New Jersey, radio station WJY presented live coverage of the Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier heavyweight title fight. In the first major sporting event to be broadcast to a regional audience, ringside announcer J. Andrew White called Dempsey's fourth-round knockout victory.
On June 1, 1939, NBC (or technically, WNBT, which would eventually becoming NBC's flagship affiliate, WNBC) became the first American television network to broadcast a boxing match. Emanating from Yankee Stadium in New York City, Bill Stern provided the blow-by-blow commentary for the fight between Lou Nova and Max Baer.
The earliest incarnation of NBC's boxing telecasts could be traced back to 1944. Although technically, an anthology program, the Cavalcade of Sports was best known for Friday night boxing (from Madison Square Garden) on NBC from 1944 through 1960, and (after NBC decided against featuring boxing due to sensitivity over criminal allegations in the sport) then for several more years on ABC. When Cavalcade of Sports closed up shop on June 24, 1960, after a 14-year period, it marked the longest continuous run of any boxing program in television history.
On the premiere episode of Cavalcade of Sports (airing on September 29, 1944), NBC broadcast a 15-round bout between Willie Pep and Chalky Wright.
On June 19, 1946, at Yankee Stadium, Joe Louis defeated Billy Conn in the first televised World Heavyweight Championship bout ever. 146,000 people watched it on TV, also setting a record for the most seen world heavyweight bout in history. One year later on NBC on December 5, Joe Louis defeated Jersey Joe Walcott to retain the world heavyweight title.
On February 14, 1951, Sugar Ray Robinson defeated Jake LaMotta in 13 rounds for the world middleweight title.
On the March 26, 1954, edition of Gillette Cavalcade of Sports from New York City's Madison Square Garden, Al Andrews and Gustav Scholz fought in NBC's first color transmission of a sporting event.
Another boxing program called Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena aired on NBC during the same period (more specifically, from 1946 to 1948) as the Cavalcade of Sports.
On the July 14, 1979, edition of NBC SportsWorld, NBC aired an eight round long exhibition match from Denver's Mile High Stadium between former Broncos defensive lineman Lyle Alzado and Muhammad Ali. Sam Nover[2] provided the blow-by-blow commentary with Dick Schaap reporting. Two years later on June 25, NBC SportsWorld aired Sugar Ray Leonard's victory in the ninth round against Ayub Kalule[3] to become the WBA World Light Middleweight champion. Marv Albert and Ferdie Pacheco called the action from Houston's Astrodome.
Michael Weisman became the executive producer of NBC Sports in 1982.[4] In boxing, Weisman introduced the use of the three minute clock on-screen to mark how much time remained in a round and placed microphones in the boxers' corners between rounds.[5]
On May 20, 1985, NBC broadcast in prime time the IBF Heavyweight Championship of the World bout between Larry Holmes and Carl Williams. In what would become NBC's final prime time boxing broadcast for 30 years, Dick Enberg[6] hosted while Marv Albert provided blow-by-blow coverage with analyst Ferdie Pacheco.
In 2003, NBC picked up a package of three bouts from the promotional group Main Events, which aired on May 3, 10 and 17, 2003. All three matches were also aired in Spanish by NBC's sister network Telemundo. It marked the first time that NBC broadcast professional boxing since 1992, when Sportsworld ended its run after 14 years.[7][8][9][10][11] The following year, NBC and Telemundo renewed the partnership with a series of five Saturday cards beginning April 17.[12]
Beginning in 2006, when the NBCSN was known as Versus, they began airing matches from Bob Arum's Top Rank group. Nick Charles was one of the announcers. In 2010, Versus broadcast the World Series of Boxing.
NBCSN's Fight Night series premiered on January 21, 2012, from 2300 Arena in Philadelphia with Kenny Rice and trainer Freddie Roach on the call and Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated serving as reporter and researcher.
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Main article: Premier Boxing Champions |
In January 2015, NBC announced that Al Michaels would host ringside along with blow-by-blow man Marv Albert[13] and color commentator Sugar Ray Leonard for the PBC on NBC[14] Saturday night bouts. In partnership with Haymon Boxing,[15] NBC would televise 20 PBC on NBC events[16] (beginning on March 7[17]), including five to be shown in prime time on Saturday nights.
In its review of the inaugural Premier Boxing Champions event on NBC, Bad Left Hook praised the event's on-air production style for feeling more like a "modern", "true mainstream sports show" than the boxing events of HBO and Showtime, along with the performance of Al Michaels, Steve Smoger, and BJ Flores. The performance of Marv Albert was panned, noting that he "[missed] a lot of the action", along with Steve Farhood's lack of contributions beyond scoring the fights. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack was also criticized for being "generic" and "[robbing] fighters of their own personalities."[18] Bleacher Report was similarly mixed, describing the atmosphere as being too "sterile" for a sport that "thrives on chaos", and that "the bland short walks to the ring and generic music presenting the fighters as interchangeable automatons [are] more NFL than WWE".[19] NBC's on-air talent also received mixed reviews, especially the poor performance of Albert, explaining that "Albert, who hasn't called boxing since 1985, sounded like a guy who hadn't called boxing in 30 years. He had a hard time keeping up with the action, eventually giving up on play-by-play and occasionally adding a booming 'Yes!' whenever a particularly telling blow landed."[19]
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Main article: Boxxer |
In October 2023, United Kingdom based boxing promoter Boxxer annnounced an agreement with NBC Sports. NBC Sports will air select bouts, primarily on its streaming service Peacock, with some also on NBC.[20]