This is great news, especially if we get the undercards as well. We should all email 10 to let them know how delighted we are, and to encourage them to do this more regularly.
The coverage is 3-4 hours so i would say we are going to get the undercards... I wonder about the commentating will it be an Aussie team, the HBO crew(doubt it) as they are doing it or someone like Bob Sheridan?
Ten comes out swinging and brings boxing back to the box Philip Derriman July 12, 2008 THE first moon landing in 1969 was watched by an estimated 600 million people around the world, then the biggest TV audience ever. Two years later, more than half that number watched Joe Frazier fight Muhammad Ali for the world heavyweight title - an equally impressive total, especially since the event wasn't shown on free-to-air TV in the US but only on closed circuit. Boxing no longer attracts audiences of that size, for the sport obviously doesn't have anything like the mass appeal it had in Ali's era. In any case, nearly all big boxing matches nowadays, both here and overseas, are screened as pay-per-view events. All of which makes Channel Ten's offering from 4am tomorrow seem the more remarkable. Ten will broadcast up to four hours of live boxing from Hamburg, culminating in a world heavyweight title fight between the Ukraine's IBF and WBO champion, Wladimir Klitschko, and American challenger Tony "The Tiger" Thompson. It will be the first world title fight in 15 years to be screened on free-to-air TV in Australia. Or so Ten believes. The network is doing the broadcast not because it senses a general upturn of interest in boxing but, rather, because it knows that the sport's core followers will be interested enough to tune in, regardless of the hour. In fact, although the telecast starts at 4am, the title fight won't get under way until three hours later. The plan is for Klitschko to walk out at 6.50am and for the bout to start at 7am, which all but guarantees it will be over before Ten returns to normal programming with Meet The Press at 8am. At this reasonably convenient hour, the curious as well as the core followers may well get out of bed for a look at Klitschko, a boxer most of us have scarcely heard of but who does have a good record. He is 32 years old and 198 centimetres tall, enjoys playing chess, maintains a website with his brother, and has won three-quarters of his bouts with knockouts. The fact he is white would once have been a talking point, but it seems to pass without comment today. His opponent is a 36-year-old southpaw who is almost as tall. No one seems to be giving him much of a chance, but Thompson himself sounds confident. Asked about tomorrow's fight in a recent interview, he said: "To me, I have one of the greatest assets in boxing. I have a mind that does not want to lose. I am looking to carry my mind to Germany, and do what I have to do." Asked how he would cope with Klitschko's size and strength, Thompson replied: "When someone hits me, I want to hit him back. I will find Klitschko's weaknesses and I will exploit them you will be shocked how easily I will beat Wladimir Klitschko." Ordinarily, Foxtel would have screened the fight on its Main Event channel, but apparently it wasn't satisfied with the broadcast deal on offer. Foxtel has done pretty well lately with pay-per-view boxing. By all accounts, the recent Jeff Fenech-Azumah Nelson fight attracted a decent number of buyers, and Anthony Mundine's next fight, against a Japanese boxer named Crazy Kim on July 30, is expected to do the same. The biggest success of all, though, remains the Mundine-Danny Green fight two years ago. Which is the most watched boxing match of all time? Unofficially, it was the Ali-George Foreman bout in Zaire in 1974, which supposedly attracted a billion viewers. If so, it was still not Ali's biggest audience. Three billion people were said to be watching when he lit the flame at the 1996 Olympics.
