…Gonna Grind like it’s 1999!
* When HBO’s Ross Greenburg recently ripped the Klitschkos and pretty much the entire heavyweight division a new one, he apparently didn’t know that there was, indeed, an agreement in place to broadcast the upcoming Wladimir Klitschko-Alexander Povetkin on September 11th.
The deal, according to Klitschko’s manager, Bernd Boente, was that HBO would pay $250,000 for the rights to broadcast the fight on same-day tape delay. As a matter of fact, it was this deal that persuaded Klitschko’s people to change the original date of September 18th to the 11th in order to better accomodate HBO.
Now, Klitschko finds himself with no US distribution and not much time to look for an alternate TV outlet. Originally, Showtime expressed interest in showing the fight as a taped lead-in to September 18th’s Juan Manuel Lopez-Rafael Marquez bout, but Klitschko’s people went with HBO after the agreement was reached.
Now, as Boente told Dan Rafael of ESPN, the Klitschkos are enraged and have vowed to boycott HBO in favor of Showtime even if it costs them money. This means no Klitschko-Haye on HBO, even if the bout does eventually get made.
* Word from Juan Diaz is that if he wins his upcoming rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez, he will be staying at lightweight and not moving up to 140 for a lucrative Amir Khan bout. Khan has stated that he will be fighting the winner of Marquez-Diaz II in December. Hopefully, Marquez will also take his name from the Khan set-up and Amir will have to face an actual, “for real” jr. welter threat.
* Provided he gets by Yuri Nuzhnenko this Friday, Matthew Hatton is next in line for Saul “El Canelo” Alvarez. There’s talk is of putting Alvarez-Hatton on the September 18th undercard of the Shane Mosley-Sergio Mora pay-per-view.
* Cory Spinks vs. Cornelius Bundrage has been added to the August 7th Don King card in St. Louis. Already on the card is Devon Alexander-Andreas Kotelnik and Tavoris Cloud-Glen Johnson. Spinks-Bundrage will be for Spinks’ IBF jr. middleweight title.
* Mike Tyson, while on a speaking tour of the UK, paid a surprise visit to pigeon breeder, Darren Peters of Lincolnshire. Tyson has been a pigeon enthusiast since childhood and ended up spending a couple of hourse on Peters’ 600-pigeon farm.
As he was saying good bye to Mr. Peters, Tyson heard a bell go off in the distance and immediately clinched Peters and twisted his arm as if to break it while sinking his teeth into Peters’ left earlobe.
Ok…I made up that last part, but it could’ve happened…
…Grind is coming back tomorrow!
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