Al Haymon will be announcing another TV deal (although not he himself, personally), just one week after NBC made its announcement of its new boxing series with Haymon. Today, it will be formally announced that Haymon made another television deal with Spike TV. As was the case with the NBC announcement -- and pretty much anything Haymon-related -- today's press conference will be a mostly closed-off affair, with almost no boxing media being invited to the presser.
Analogous to the NBC deal, Haymon has purchased airtime from the network using what some are estimating to be as high as a $100 million dollar war chest, backed by Haymon himself and outside investors. The show will carry the same name as the one on NBC, "Premier Boxing Champions," because it's basically the same show on another network. It's unclear at this time how many more fight dates Haymon has secured with this deal, but the first fight that will appear on this network will reportedly be on March 13th.
With the first card, Haymon is again coming through with competitive match-ups, as he will kick off his Spike TV venture with a Andre Berto - Josesito Lopez fight. It is also being planned to have Shawn Porter vs. Roberto Garcia as a co-feature. Berto-Lopez is certainly an intriguing match-up between two fighters who will surely mix it up quite a bit. They've both sustained heavy punishment in their recent losses but both have been rebounding since then, albeit against lesser opposition. Now they'll be meeting each other in a fight that'll determine who has what left in the tank. Porter-Garcia isn't a particularly bad fight either.
So it's beginning to look more and more like Haymon is effectively cutting out the big premium networks and promotional companies, cornering the market for himself. In fact, it was years ago when Haymon was first reported to have said "If I wanted to, I could run boxing," and he certainly looks to be making good on his word.