BOXING COVERAGE RIVALRY

ABS-CBN Promotes ‘Digmaan’
While Rival GMA-7 Endorses ‘Will to Win’

By ALEX P. VIDAL

The shoe is now on the other foot.
In a strange twist, ABS-CBN, erstwhile “live” coverage sponsor of boxing icon Manny Pacquiao played up not the Oct. 7 non-title rematch between Pac-quiao and Marco Antonio Barrera in Las Vegas dubbed “Will to Win” like what rival GMA-7 did, but the World Boxing Organization (WBO) heavyweight championship tussle between Russian champion Sultan Ibragimov and challenger Evander Holyfield on Oct. 14 in Moscow it dubbed as “Digmaan.”
ABS-CBN had been a consistent partner of the Filipino beakbuster in his past blockbuster fights in the Philippines and in the United States against Mexican hombres and even once co-promoted with the Manny Pacquiao Promotions (MPP) the 28-year-old lefty’s 12-round WBC international superfeatherweight rumble with Oscar Larios at the Araneta Colesium in 2005.
In the pay-per-view Pacquiao-Barrera shootout co-promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank and Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, ABS-CBN has no involvement both in the coverage and sponsorship.
GMA-7 was able to reportedly outbid the rival network for the right to broadcast “live” the Pacquiao-Barrera fisticuff. (Ed: The live broadcast was aborted. SM Butz J. Maquinto of RGMA-DYRU, Kalibo apologized for it.) Thus, for three weeks, GMA-7 covered Pacquiao’s training in Cebu including his departure to Los Angeles and arrival in Las Vegas.
It was reported it will cover the megabuck fight “live.” (But it didn’t.)
ABS-CBN, on the other hand, has neither advertised nor mentioned the “Will to Win” fight and is focusing heavily on Evander Holyfield’s attempt to annex his fifth world title currently worn by the Russian dynamo in a championship brawl promoted by Seminole Warrior Boxing, Golden Boy, Golden Grain Promotions, Main Events, Yuri Federov Sports Lab, Real Deal Promotions and Sampson Lew-kowicz in association with Nafta Moskva and the Seminole Tribe of Florida will be televised from Moscow, Russia via pay-per-view.. /MP