Hatton-Lazcano and Malignaggi-N'dou card finds American TV home

by Scott Christ on Mar 23, 2008 1:02 AM EDT in Boxing News Analysis

From the network that has brought you such thrilling encounters as Tye Fields v. Roderick Willis and Hasim Rahman v. Taurus Sykes comes... Ricky Hatton in a junior welterweight double-header that people might actually want to see?

Yep, that's right -- the Versus Network has come to an agreement with Golden Boy Promotions to air the May 24th double-header, headlined by Ricky Hatton's post-Mayweather comeback, with Paulie Malignaggi's rematch with Lovemore N'dou opening the night. Hatton will face dangerous veteran Juan Lazcano.

Who'd have guessed? This, hopefully, will make Vs. an actual player, after promoting lame Top Rank cards that seemingly had no regard for whether or not there was any audience left. Too long has Vs. (formerly OLN) relied on washed-up heavyweights like Rahman or freak heavyweight attractions like Fields. Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer says he hopes to continue making cards with the network. If that comes to fruition -- the network's deal with Top Rank is coming to an end -- let's hope they offer up more attractive cards.

The fight will go up against Showtime's coverage of Kessler-Miranda. Showtime, for the record, was offered the Hatton card, but passed, I'd guess due to costs, even though they offered up a cool million bones for the Kessler-Miranda fight. Rafael says HBO showed little interest, thinking that the main event matchup wasn't interesting and that with it taking place on Memorial Day weekend, they couldn't pull in enough viewers to make it worth their while. That makes good enough sense.

With this, though, Vs. will get to see if they can draw viewers on any scale to an attractive card.

I do have to note that it's quite a fall from fighting Floyd Mayweather, Jr., on a massive pay-per-view all the way down to the Versus Network, though.

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IN AGREEMENT

Not a popular watcher of Vs but for this one come on now that is a given. I have to admit thought the firs time I watched hatton fight was with the Mayweather fight. Eventhough he looked strong and good, it did not seemed like it was good enough. I may be wrong I am aware of that but it was just not good enough for me. In way I see their point of view, but damn from PPV to VS thats loosing booth balls. The least he could have gottten was HBO or SHO but VS I don't know. The deal had to go bad some how.

This reminds me of the comment that Cotto made towards Malignaggi:

"As you can see I am the champ. And when I beat him [Malignaggi] he will end up fighting back at bellow the roof of all the ballrooms and other arenas after that happens."

by CRAZEDANG1280 on Mar 23, 2008 2:44 AM EDT reply actions

Hatton

At 147, he is absolutely nothing special as a fighter. At 140, he's outstanding, and inarguably the champion of the division. I do think Junior Witter would give him all he could handle.

He's also the No. 1 ticket-seller in boxing, no doubt about it. 50,000 for a fight with Juan Lazcano -- who else could do that?

by Scott Christ on Mar 23, 2008 2:54 AM EDT up reply actions

Daytime TV?

Man, I hope Golden Boy snags those Versus dates. Top Rank was putting on some shitty cards.

This fight will be during the day in the US, right? I don't think they would push back the start time of the fight to accomodate a Versus telecast...

So, hopefully, it won't coincide with the Showtime card, time-wise.

As an aside, I still have no idea why Malignaggi is fighting N'dou again. From now on, they should put an asterisk on every rematch clause that says the following: "In the event of this fight turning out like Malignaggi-N'dou 1, this rematch clause will be void." What a waste of time...

by Kevin Gonzalez on Mar 23, 2008 3:44 AM EDT reply actions