Boxing fans can officially cut the cord.<\/p>\n
After Saturday night\u2019s bout that saw Xander Zayas defeat Jorge Garcia via unanimous decision in Madison Square Garden, Top Rank Boxing\u2019s eight-year run on ESPN officially came to an end. The Worldwide Leader decided not to renew its deal<\/a> with the boxing promotion in February. And as of July 27, Top Rank has yet to ink another broadcast deal; though CEO Bob Arum indicated in April that he plans on splitting rights between multiple partners<\/a>.<\/p>\n But at least for now, boxing is no longer a sport that airs on linear television.<\/p>\n As Jason Clinkscales reported for Sportico<\/a> on Sunday, no major boxing promotion has an active deal with a linear television network. HBO aired its final fight in 2018. Showtime shuttered its boxing vertical in 2023<\/a>. Premier Boxing Champions, another fighting promotion, had its deals with Fox Sports and Showtime expire in 2022 and now have a deal with Prime Video<\/a> rather than a traditional platform. Oscar De La Hoya\u2019s Golden Boy Promotions has moved exclusively to sports streaming service DAZN. And Jake Paul\u2019s Most Valuable Promotions has a deal with Netflix.<\/p>\n Further, Clinkscales reports that Top Rank has had \u201cpreliminary talks\u201d with Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, neither of which went very far.<\/p>\n There is, however, a small chance that ESPN doesn\u2019t fully exit the boxing space. The network could end up partnering with TKO Boxing, the new UFC-backed promotion. ESPN\u2019s current media rights deal with UFC expires in December, though the network is interested in re-upping in some capacity. TKO Boxing could bolster ESPN\u2019s combat sports offerings on its forthcoming streaming service, though it\u2019s unclear if the promotion would ever receive linear exposure.<\/p>\n In many ways, Saturday night marked the end of an era for a sport that has had many eras end in recent years. If there\u2019s one thing boxing fans are used to in 2025, it\u2019s constant change. And from a broadcast perspective, it seems wise to expect more change soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boxing fans can officially cut the cord. After Saturday night\u2019s bout that saw Xander Zayas defeat Jorge Garcia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,25891,85,14849,25892],"class_list":{"0":"post-26614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-boxing-on-espn","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-top-rank","14":"tag-top-rank-boxing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}