"The Fight Game with Jim Lampley" premieres on Saturday night at Midnight EDT on HBO. A lot of people are excited, a lot seem unsure, but it's coming to us, and I for one am very interested to see if the show is as good as it could and should be. HBO Sports generally does a terrific job with things like this, and Lampley at his core is a great broadcast journalist, never mind my indifference toward him as a play-by-play man for much of the last few years.
Here's the trailer for the show:
I'll have a review of the show on Sunday. I don't know if I'll get to watch "live" on Saturday night, since we'll be covering the Viloria-Romero show starting at 9 p.m. EDT, but I definitely plan to set the DVR and watch after.
This show should be knocked out of the park, and I think boxing fans, even those of us plugged into everything daily, will wind up happy here. Fingers crossed, knock on wood. Hopefully it does well enough to get moved to a better timeslot -- I'd honestly love to see this show something like Thursdays at 10 p.m.
For its debut, the show will be paired with the replays of the Mayweather vs Cotto and Canelo vs Mosley fights from last weekend. The fights start at 10:15 p.m. EDT.
To give you an idea of how up-to-date they're trying to keep the show, the Peterson-Khan issue will be discussed on Saturday night's show. They're trying to stay as current and on top of things as possible for a recorded broadcast. I love what I've seen of Lampley's enthusiasm for this thing. He seems genuinely excited, licking his chops for the chance to do something like this again.