Golovkin-Murray, Abraham-Smith II, FNF, ShoBox: Boxing TV schedule for February 20-21

Friday, February 20

ESPN2, 9:00 pm EST, Boxcino: Heavyweights. The lineup for this potential trainwreck is Donovan Dennis vs Steve Vukosa, Razvan Cojanu vs Ed Fountain, Nat Heaven vs Andrey Fedosov, and Mario Heredia vs Lenroy Thomas. The potential money, such as it were, would be in a Heaven-Dennis rematch. You may recall Heaven stopping Dennis in the first round in April 2014. Heaven went on to be stopped in 29 seconds by journeyman Stacy Frazier three months later and hasn't fought since. The smart money in this tournament is probably Fedosov, but you never know. Also, this might be great fun, but I feel like lowered expectations are generally smart for heavyweight boxing, and then you can pretend something mediocre was "pretty good, actually." BLH will have live coverage.

SHO, 10:00 pm EST, Sammy Vasquez Jr vs Emmanuel Lartei Lartey, Argenis Mendez vs Daniel Evangelista Jr, Umberto Savigne vs Craig Baker. As Showtime tries to rebound from the Golden Boy and Haymon mass exoduses and figure out just what in the hell it is that they're going to do in 2015 now that their soul has been ripped out, more or less, here's a ShoBox! There's also a ShoBox scheduled for March! And they had a show in January! (I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but this situation cannot be argued as "good" for CBS/Showtime.) BLH will have live coverage.

Saturday, February 21

Sky Sports 3 (UK) / SAT1 (DEU), 3:00 pm EST, Arthur Abraham vs Paul Smith II, David Price vs Irineu Beato Costa Jr, Stefan Haertel vs Crispulo Javier Andino. The first Abraham-Smith fight was somewhat controversial, with Abraham getting wide scores in a surprisingly competitive and entertaining battle, and the rematch makes plenty of sense. Smith fought like a guy who deserved to be taken more seriously than he was, and earned another shot at the belt. The undercard has Price against another can as he tries to rehab himself enough to maybe get knocked out in a world title fight later, and Haertel is a middling prospect who fought in London in 2012. BLH will have live coverage.

Main Event PPV (AUS) / Sport 1 (HUN) / RPC 4 (PAN), 2:30 pm EST, Gennady Golovkin vs Martin Murray, Hekkie Budler vs Jesus Silvestre, Lee Haskins vs Omar Lamiri, Hughie Fury vs Andriy Rudenko. It's a solid overall card from Monte Carlo, as it usually is from Rodney Berman and Golden Gloves, with the big world title main event in the middleweight division, plus another world title fight between Budler and Silvestre at strawweight. Haskins-Lamiri is for the vacant European bantamweight title, and Fury-Rudenko is a fairly ambitious next step for young Hughie. BLH will have live coverage.

HBO, 5:45 pm EST, Gennady Golovkin vs Martin Murray. HBO is televising just the main event, but that's all most anyone really cares about anyway, and good news is you'll have the live airing in HD on U.S. TV. We'll have a lot more on GGG-Murray all week long. Good to have premium cable boxing back again, but this is also sort of the final "premium cable" stand without legitimate opposition from Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions fights on NBC and Spike, coming in March. BLH will have live coverage.