Frank Warren Rejoins ITV!

01.07.05 – Promoter Frank Warren is delighted to announce that he has concluded a deal with ITV to bring big-time boxing back to terrestrial television. ITV will broadcast 20 Sports Network shows per-year featuring the best talent in British and World boxing that will include IBF World Light-Welterweight Champion Ricky Hatton, who sensationally defeated Kostya Tszyu earlier this month, undefeated WBO World Super-Middleweight Champion Joe Calzaghe and WBO World Featherweight Champion Scott Harrison..

The first show to be televised in the deal will be the highly anticipated professional debut of Olympic Silver Medallist Amir Khan who features on the undercard of Matt Skelton’s explosive British Heavyweight title defence against former champion Danny Williams on Saturday 16 July at the Bolton Arena.

The next ITV show will feature British and Commonwealth Super-Featherweight Champion Alex Arthur as he makes his historic attempt to win the Europe title against Boris Sinitsin on July 23 at Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Stadium.

For Warren, who has been a promoter since 1980 and has promoted in excess of 200 world title fights, this is a return to ITV where he brought the biggest names including Nigel Benn, Frank Bruno and Naseem Hamed who’s fights were in the top five sporting programmes for 1995 in terms of television ratings.

Warren said, “I am delighted to rejoin ITV where I spent 14 happy years delivering them the best fighters in Benn, Bruno and Hamed when the station was known as home of British boxing and they all drew in the best viewing figures at the time,”

“From ITV, I then spent 10 great years with Sky Sports and developed Ricky Hatton to public prominence through satellite television when many people said that it could not be done,”

“We saw the huge potential of boxing on ITV when we promoted the Amir Khan-Mario Kindelan rematch in May and it delivered fantastic TV ratings – to the tune of 6.3m viewers – that beat everything else that night and is the biggest Saturday night viewership this year. Just imagine what kind of figures exciting fighters like Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe will pull in,”

“Now I am looking forward to working with Mark Sharman, the new Controller of Sport at ITV, in rebuilding the stations reputation as the home of British boxing with the very best fights.”