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Showtime Championship Boxing

1986 American TV series or program

Showtime Championship Boxing is an American boxing television program that aired on Showtime. Debuting in March 1986, it was broadcast live on the first Saturday of every month. Showtime Championship Boxing, which was very similar to HBO World Championship Boxing, featured Mauro Ranallo on play-by-play, Al Bernstein as the color analyst, Jimmy Lennon (Sr. and Jr.) as ring announcers, and Jim Gray as reporter.

A sister program, ShoBox: The New Generation, has occasionally aired on Friday nights, featuring fights between boxing prospects. Showtime has also occasionally aired limited cards on the CBS broadcast network since 2012, with the telecasts billed as a special edition of Showtime Championship Boxing rather than being billed as a CBS Sports broadcast.

With the announcement in October 2023 that Showtime Sports will be closing at the end of year, any future sports programming on the network will be branded under the CBS Sports branding.

01Notable fights

02Commentators

Brian Custer served as host of the program from 2015-2023. The main broadcast team featured Mauro Ranallo on blow-by-blow, Al Bernstein as chief color analyst and (when he was available) boxer Abner Mares as an analyst. Amir Khan, Austin Trout, and Daniel Jacobs have served as guest analysts. The third role was previously filled by Antonio Tarver, Ferdie Pacheco, Bobby Czyz, and Paulie Malignaggi among others. Veteran Jim Gray served as chief reporter. Steve Farhood was the "unofficial scorer". Previous top commentators include Steve Albert and Gus Johnson.

The New Generation features Barry Tompkins on blow-by-blow, and Raul Marquez and Brian Campbell as the expert analysts.

In 1992, Jimmy Lennon Jr. the son of Jimmy Lennon became the program's regular ring announcer and occasionally HBO World Championship Boxing ring announcer Michael Buffer would sub for Lennon and Lennon would occasionally sub for Buffer on HBO.

Watch videos about Showtime Championship BoxingExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Showtime Championship Boxing, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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