for 2009, Lou Dibella entertainment has secured 10 tv dates on versus. Micheal Marley's site just confirmed this. This is a strong move by Lou. Now young stars as Hearns, Witherspoon, Mcgirt, Tor Harmer are secured to get national exposure for next year. And fighters like Taylor,Mijares, Berto, Mallignagi, Cintron and quintana are able to get national tv dates easy, when HBO and Showtime are lowering their budget for boxing and deciding to only showcase veterans like hopkins, mosley, oscar, jones, mayorga, winky etc.
I don't like this move one bit. I thought Versus would have learned their lesson after their deal with Top Rank left them obligated to provide a certain of amount of dates, which resulted in too many mismatches and shows headlined by Ty Fields. They should be concerned about getting the best possible match ups available, instead of giving one promoter X amount of shows. Not to mention Dibella's stable of fighters isn't exactly the deepest. Call me pessimistic, but I only see a lot of uninteresting Chazz Witherspoon and James McGirt headlined events, with an occasional Mijares or Cintron mismatch, coming out of this. But at least this shows Versus plans to stick with Boxing for a while. With the demise of Wednesday Night Fights and Solo Boxeo, they can at least catch up some of the slack.
