HBO World Championship Boxing is an American sports television series on premium television network HBO. It premiered on January 22, 1973 with a fight that saw George Foreman defeat Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica.
James Lampley is an American sportscaster, news anchor, film producer, and restaurant owner. He was best known as a blow-by-blow announcer on HBO World Championship Boxing for 30 years. He also had covered a record 14 Olympic Games on U.S. television, most recently the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
TruTV is an American basic cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The channel primarily broadcasts comedy, docusoaps, and reality shows.
The cable television network ESPN has occasionally broadcast boxing events over the majority of its history, as part of several arrangements, including contracts with specific promotions and consortiums such as Golden Boy Promotions, Premier Boxing Champions, and Top Rank, as well as Friday Night Fights—a semi-regular series that was broadcast by ESPN and ESPN2 from 1998 through 2015.
Guillermo Rigondeaux Ortiz is a Cuban professional boxer. He is a former world champion in two weight classes, having held the unified WBA (Super), WBO and Ring magazine super bantamweight titles between 2013 and 2017, and the WBA (Regular) bantamweight title from 2020 to 2021. He has also challenged once for the WBO junior lightweight title in 2017.
The Ring magazine was established in 1922 and has named a Knockout of the Year since 1989, based on the magazine's writers' criteria.
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based at Warner Bros. Discovery's corporate headquarters inside 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district. Programming featured on the network consists primarily of theatrically released motion pictures and original television programs as well as made-for-cable movies, documentaries, occasional comedy, and concert specials, and periodic interstitial programs.
TNT Sports is the division of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) that is responsible for sports broadcasts on its parent company's streaming service Max and on their various cable channels in the United States, including TBS, TNT, and TruTV. It also operates the online digital media outlets for the NCAA, NBA, PGA Tour, and PGA of America. TNT Sports also operates the sports news website Bleacher Report, as well as NBA TV on behalf of the NBA. It also owns a minority share in the MLB Network. Internationally, the division is branded as Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe, which operates Eurosport.
Nonito Gonzales Donaire Jr. is a Filipino American professional boxer. He has held multiple world championships in four weight classes from flyweight to featherweight, and is the oldest boxer in history to win a bantamweight world title, as well as being the first three-time champion in that weight class. Donaire has also held world championships in three consecutive decades: the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s, being the sixth boxer to do so after Evander Holyfield, Manny Pacquiao, Bernard Hopkins, Erik Morales, and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Showtime Championship Boxing was a television boxing program airing on Showtime. Debuting in March 1986, it is broadcast live on the first Saturday of every month. Showtime Championship Boxing, which is very similar to HBO World Championship Boxing, features Mauro Ranallo on play-by-play, Al Bernstein as the color analyst, Jimmy Lennon as ring announcers, and Jim Gray as reporter.
Top Rank, Inc. is a boxing promotional company founded by Jabir Herbert Muhammad and Bob Arum, which was incorporated in 1973, and is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Nordine Oubaali is a Moroccan former professional boxer who competed from 2014 to 2021. He held the WBC bantamweight title from 2019 to 2021. As an amateur he won a bronze medal in the light-flyweight division at the 2007 World Championships.
John Riel Reponte Casimero is a Filipino professional boxer and a fulltime YouTuber. He has held world championships in three weight classes; including the IBF junior-flyweight title from 2012 to 2013; the IBF flyweight title in 2016; and the WBO bantamweight title from 2019 to 2022. Quadro Alas is Tagalog for four of a kind when translated, his moniker means Four Aces.
Julio César Chávez Jr. vs. Marco Antonio Rubio, billed as Welcome to the Future, was a boxing middleweight bout for the WBC world title. The bout was held on February 4, 2012, at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, United States. where 14,000 fans were in attending.
The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board (TBRB) is an all-volunteer initiative formed in October 2012 with the intention of providing professional boxing with authoritative top-ten rankings, identifying the singular world champion of every division by unbiased reasoning and common sense, and to insist on the sport's reform. Board members are independent professional journalists, boxing historians and record keepers from around the world. Their rankings and titles are meant to be uninfluenced by promoters and the traditional sanctioning bodies' paid-for "alphabet belts".
Naoya Inoue is a Japanese professional boxer. Nicknamed "The Monster", Inoue is known for his timing, speed, punching power, and body-punching ability, having a knockout ratio of 90.4% in world title matches, which is the highest KO rate in the history of world title matches. He is a four-division world champion, and only the second male boxer to become the undisputed champion in two different weight classes in the four-belt era. He is the current, first, and only undisputed super bantamweight world champion, holding the WBC and WBO super bantamweight titles since July 2023, and the WBA (Super), IBF, and Ring super bantamweight titles since December 2023. He is also the former undisputed bantamweight world champion, having held the WBA (Super), IBF, and Ring magazine titles between 2019 and January 2023, and the WBC and WBO titles between 2022 and January 2023. He previously held the WBA (Regular) bantamweight title from 2018 to 2019, the WBO super flyweight title from 2014 to 2018, and the WBC light flyweight title in 2014.
Crystina Poncher is currently a commentator, host and reporter for Top Rank Boxing on ESPN. She previously served as host, reporter and correspondent for NFL Network and NFL.com.
Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) is an ongoing series of televised boxing events and promotion connected to manager Al Haymon.
Manny Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas, billed as The Legend/The Champ, was a boxing match for the WBO welterweight championship. The event took place on November 5, 2016 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao won the fight by unanimous decision and took the WBO welterweight title. The fight sold 300,000 pay-per-view (PPV) buys in the United States (US), earning an estimated $18 million in pay-per-view revenue.
Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury II, billed as Unfinished Business, was a heavyweight professional boxing rematch between undefeated and reigning WBC champion Deontay Wilder and undefeated former unified heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, for the WBC and vacant The Ring heavyweight titles. The event took place on February 22, 2020, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Paradise, Nevada. Fury won the bout by seventh-round technical knockout (TKO).
