NBC Sports yesterday formally announced that Marv Albert will serve as blow-by-blow announcer for the upcoming Premier Boxing Champions series of fight telecasts, which will debut on Saturday, March 7. Sugar Ray Leonard will serve as analyst and Al Michaels as host. Additional announcers for NBC's boxing coverage will be named in the coming weeks (NBC). Albert said that NBC "approached him about the opportunity and he immediately said he would be interested, but first executives from Turner and CBS had to sign off on the idea." Albert said that he would "do a practice broadcast with Leonard" later this month when he is in L.A. for an NBA game on TNT. On Long Island, Neil Best notes this "marks a return to NBC" for Albert, who was the net's "lead NBA play-by-play man until it lost broadcast rights to the league" following the '01-02 season (NEWSDAY, 2/10). ESPN.com's Dan Rafael noted Albert "worked on boxing for NBC" from '80-'03, though the net "did not do much boxing for a large part of the 1990s and early 2000s." He did call boxing "at three Olympics for the network" (ESPN.com, 2/9).
OSCAR'S PUNCH-OUT: Golden Boy Promotions President & co-Founder Oscar De La Hoya appeared on Fox Business yesterday to promote his new Spanish-language TV channel De La Hoya TV, which will go behind the scenes to show how boxers and MMA fighters live and train. Fox Business’ Liz Claman noted the channel is "expected to launch later this year first as a free video on-demand subscription.” De La Hoya said, "The idea behind De La Hoya TV is that boxing right now with MMA is so popular when it comes to the Hispanic consumer. As you know, we have 50 million-plus Hispanics living in the U.S. and so we not only want to show you fighters and fights and boxing, we want to take you beyond what happens in their everyday life.” Claman noted competing networks will "scratch your eyes out" and "threaten anybody who comes on your channel.” But De La Hoya said the channel “is not a competitor whatsoever,” as it is going to "enhance what Fox Sports 1 already televises." De La Hoya: "What we want to do is go behind the scenes of leading up to these big major fights" ("Countdown to the Closing Bell," Fox Business, 2/9).
