Yo Adrianne! They Did It!" - Main Events & NBC Bring Back Boxing to American Network Television.

By Fred De La Riva

03.05 - The time has come. The battle lines have been drawn. The time is now…………..

Every once in a while sports have defining moments. For professional basketball, it was the entrance of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson into their ranks, to continue the long going rivarly between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. For professional football it was Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeating the Baltimore Colts back in 1969 for the championship of the league. In golf, the incredible succeses of Tiger Woods have transcended the sport and have caught the attention of a younger, hipper generation. And how about boxing?

Well, where do I begin? We've had many great moments, since I began following the sport religiously back in 1989. Too many to count, I must say. Some have been historic, some have been down right embarassing and for the most part none have been on free television. In America, most boxing events are shown on ESPN, Showtime, Fox Sports and of course HBO. Now I'm not going to bring up Telemundo and the rest of the Spanish stations because that is an entirely different topic altogether.

As I was growing up in the early to mid 80's, I can remember watching Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, and countless other greats on the networks. Imagine this. Back in July 19th of 1980, Roberto Duran fought Sugar Ray Leonard for the WBC Welterweight Championship on ABC's "Wide World of Sports"!!!

It was free folks.

I did not have to shell out $39.95 to watch it. To tell the truth. I wouldn't have watched it. My mother, an avid boxing fan herself, wasn't able to afford it with three kids to raise on her own. I must have been around 6, as I remember my mother screaming at the television that Ali could only beat Frazier because "he danced way too much" during their classic "Thrilla in Manila" bout. My memory fails me if this fight was a replay or the actual live feed, but it was on network television.

This fight was free too folks.

It was fights like the Duran/Leonard fight that planted the seed within my spirit. Fights like those help that seed grow into the "fiery bush" that burns in my belly to this day. By the time the 90's came around, I was hooked. I was one of those thousands of people that were willing to purchase the countless of excellent pay-per view cards Don King put together, while Mike Tyson was in jail. The cards that made Julio Cesar Chavez the icon that is he is today, but the card's successes also brought an end to free boxing on television.

The sad truth is that sports is a business first and an athletic event second and the major networks were making too much money with the increasing popularity of basketball and football. In the 1990's, the networks did not need boxing anymore. NBC had Michael Jordan. CBS and Fox had the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL and ABC picked up the slack where those two other networks left off. Having boxing on pay television ignored the majority of kids that grew up in the 90's. They are the lost generation. They have missed out all the epic battles that happened on the old USA Network "Tuesday Night Fights", and on HBO's "Boxing After Dark" series. Well the time has come to get some of them back. To gain some of the young ones, that are now in their formative years in the first decade of the 21st century.

On May 3rd, 2003 , NBC will telecast its first professional boxing along side with Main Events, Telemundo and with Budweiser signing on as a major sponsor. Let's hope that the night's combatants Rocky Juarez and Frankie Archuleta make it a memorable night.

Let's pray that this is the beginning of a long relationship that will re-ignite the national interest in this sport. So gather the young ones around the television and plant the seed. And with any luck we can watch the seed grow.

If you have any comments regarding this article, feel free to contact the author at delariva69@sbcglobal.net