Khan vs. McCloskey won’t be shown on Sky Sports

By Boxing News - 04/10/2011 - Comments

Image: Khan vs. McCloskey won't be shown on Sky SportsBy William Mackay: Sky Sports is reporting that next Saturday’s title fight between WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) and Irish challenger Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) won’t be televised on Sky Sports, period. It was originally taken off of Sky Sports pay-per-view and moved to Sky Sports 3 shortly after the planned undercard fight between Tyson Fury and Hasim Rahman fell apart. This would have resulted in a huge drop in Khan’s purse for the fight.

But now Sky is reporting that they’re not even going to be showing the Khan-McCloskey fight at all. According to their website, they’re saying that they couldn’t reach an agreement on the television scheduling for the bout. The switch from PPV to Sky Sports 3 was apparently not accepted by Khan and his team.

This what Sky had to say on the matter: “The Khan vs. McCloskey bill had been announced as a Sky Box Office event two months ago. Since then there were several changes to the bill, so we made the decision – before the main promotional campaign started and Sky customers booked the event – to give it to Sky Sports viewers.”

One of the changes to the undercard was Matthew Macklin pulling out of his fight with Khoren Gevor. This left a big hole in the undercard that proved difficult to fill. It was hoped that the Fury-Rahman fight could help make the fight card salvageable for PPV. However, with Rahman deciding he didn’t want to fight Fury on only two weeks notice, it meant that there was precious little in the way of interesting undercard fights to beef up the Khan-McCloskey card. What made the situation even worse was the apparent lack of interest on the whole with the Khan vs. McCloskey fight.

While Khan and his team loved the idea of fighting the little know, weak-punching McCloskey, the love apparently didn’t transfer to the boxing fans who being asked to pay to watch this fight. Khan and his team should have opted to fight Breidis Prescott, a fighter that previously knocked Khan out in one round in 2008. Prescott may not have done much since that win, but boxing fans aren’t aware of his struggles and would have still purchased the Khan-Prescott 2 rematch in droves. The fight likely would have been enough on it’s on to keep it on PPV even with Macklin and Fury not on the card.

Khan and his team are shooting themselves in the foot by not having SKy Sports show the Khan-McCloskey fight. You can’t blame Sky for not wanting to make the Khan-McCloskey fight a PPV event, especially with the disaster of the David Haye vs. Audley Harrison PPV fiasco fresh in the minds of fans. Sky Sports wants to put on interesting competitive match-ups, not fights that appear to be a mismatch coming in the door. This was Khan and his team’s call to choose McCloskey rather than Prescott. This is what happens when you opt for the easier fight against the lesser known fighter. Khan should make the best of the situation by fighting McCloskey on Sky 3 and doing his best to win over new fans who might want to purchase his future fights on PPV.



Comments are closed.