For those who have not heard, HBO is starting up a new show about boxing. The show will be called "The Fight Game With Jim Lampley," and it will obviously be hosted by HBO boxing commentator Jim "Nuts and Guts" Lampley. The new show will premier on May 12th at midnight, but details about the show have been scarce. In order to get the inside scoop, Lem Satterfield of The Ring interviewed the Jim Lampley
RingTV.com: So can you give an overview of the show?
Jim Lampley: Well, it's a 30-minute show, and it's entirely for the boxing cult. And it's entirely about things that we see on the air, on our network and others in our sport. I don't think anything like it has existed before, and I'm very, very excited about that.
RingTV.com: Can you reveal what sort of subject matter will be death with?
JL: Any and all, I would hope. Let's say that you were sitting down at a bar, and you were discussing boxing for an hour, let's say, with five other writers. Given the day-to-day news landscape in our sport, with all of the things that go on, the things that you read about day-to-day in your reports and the reports of other writers and the blogosphere, anything is fair game. So we'll talk about what happens in the ring, we'll talk about things in a business context, we'll talk about what kinds of things are happening in the culture as it relates to boxing.
I hope that this show succeeds and it sounds like an interesting concept. It feels like a ‘Costas Tonight' type of show except that it is only about boxing. My only problem with this show is that Jim Lampley is going to be the host. I think that this show could be very successful with someone like Max Kellerman being the host. He could provide some nice analyses of past fights and interviews with people currently involved with boxing news (e.g. interviewing Todd duBoef about the Gamboa situation). I'll give this show a shot but I'm not too optimistic that it's going to succeed and I'm pretty sure HBO doesn't think so either given the timeslot. Are you guys going to give the show a shot and do you think it is going to be successful?