Top Rank promoter Bob Arum isn’t intimidated by the competition he’s about to face from the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In its new deal with FOX, the UFC plans to air its first free event on Nov. 12 at 9PM EST; Arum is promoting an HBO PPV card in the same timeslot. But, many spectators are asking if pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao’s welterweight title battle against Juan Manual Marquez is enough to keep combat fans tuned in. The Pacquiao versus Marquez fight will be their third meeting in a long-awaited showdown.
This past Thursday, FOX and UFC announced a seven year, $100 million annual deal to bring the mixed martial arts phenomenon from Spike and Versus to the FOX family of network channels. FOX’s UFC event may be in the same timeslot as the Pacquiao vs. Marquez bout, but UFC officials claim their event will be over before the starting bell in the boxing ring.
FOX – which already airs sporting events such as the Super Bowl and World Series – airs in over 100 million homes and carries four events per year; its UFC event is the first. Arum isn’t getting his feathers ruffled by the competition and he actually thinks it will help the pay-per-view event:
“I think it helps it because there will be a lot of talk about it, and people who follow boxing and love boxing are gonna vote with their dollars,” he said. “We’re going to rally the base. We’ve got all the Democrats and Independents. They’ll all be watching boxing.”
Arum also thinks its “not an accident” that FOX scheduled the UFC event at the same time; in his opinion, FOX can use the deal with the UFC to pressure cable operators to carry UFC programming on smaller networks, such as Fuel.
For more on Bob Arum’s take on competition from FOX and the UFC, read the original ESPN article here: http://es.pn/mXyEFp.
