On This Day: Premier Boxing Champions Hosted Inaugural Event on NBC Sports

There was an aggressive approach, and with what seemed like an unlimited budget, Haymon, through those who work for PBC, promised to deliver high-quality fights on NBC to restore the feeling the sport once had when that occurred regularly up until the early 90s. The splash was huge, and names like Danny Garcia, Errol Spence Jr., Thurman, and others were to be fighting on NBC, and fans were over the moon with this news.

The debut show, which featured Thurman-Guerrero, drew a whopping 3.4 million views, and things were off to the races. Eventually, those matchups on NBC would become more mismatches than classics, and PBC’s run with NBC Sports came and went. Haymon would then score deals with FOX Sports, Showtime, and, more recently, Prime Video. As the company moved from one platform to another, the fights fans wanted occurred more often on PPV than on FOX, Showtime, and now Prime Video.

It All Comes Back To “One Time”

It’s interesting that Thurman, who headlined the 2015 event, is fighting almost exactly ten years later in another country on a different promotion. When you look at Thurman’s career since that inaugural NBC event, it’s more of “what could have been” than anything else. Thurman was plagued with injuries, and with Haymon overpaying fighters led to more talk and fewer fights for Thurman.

Since that Guerrero main event, Thurman has only fought six times. Next week’s fight against Brock Jarvis will be his seventh in ten years. That sums up how some of the fighter’s careers went under PBC. The fight purses grew tremendously, and in order for a big matchup to occur, it had to go behind PPV for it to happen. Sure, they were paid handsomely, but the inactivity that came with not meeting their purse demands led to injuries, over marination of fights, and some not happening at all, leading fans to get frustrated and a good portion of them dumping the sport altogether.

It was also the start of the “side of the street” debates that plagued social media for years. I’m not saying that Haymon caused it, as that has been going on throughout boxing’s existence, but with him having the majority of the steak holders in each division, he kept it in-house. This was a smart business model for him, but ultimately, it was the fans that suffered.

Ten years Later, Things Are Different

It’s unbelievable that ten years have passed since PBC first came onto the scene. These days, they don’t have as many shows, and the mid-level fighters are often found on other promoter’s cards.

DAZN made a big splash when they started, and after the reality hit, they pivoted and were forced to make some cuts and adjustments to survive the competitive world of streaming platforms. The recent Saudi splash onto boxing with now Dana White follows the same theme: they are making huge waves in the infant stage of their influence. But like others before, can they sustain it for a long period of time, or will they have to make drastic cuts like DAZN or reduce it to a smaller number of shows like PBC?

One thing that everyone could agree on is that you can never count out Haymon. Just when you think he is finished, Haymon finds another path and quickly reminds you why he has been so successful (which can be measured in many different ways) in business all these years. Can the 69-year-old Cleveland, OH, native find a way to keep PBC afloat in this ever-changing model of boxing? History will say yes, and who knows, ten years from now, we may be discussing the 20th anniversary of PBC.