A bunch of news broke over the weekend concerning a variety of topics in the sport. Among these are stories concerning an Andre Ward vacated belt, a reality television series, updates on popular fighters, and more.
- Andre Ward has now officially his final remaining belt, the World Boxing Organization version of the light heavyweight championship. Main Events have begun petitioning the WBO to sanction the November 25th HBO main event of Sergey Kovalev versus Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacated belt. No word on their ruling as of yet, but I suspect it will be yes.
- Young pay channel Epix is looking to get back in the boxing game. Reports are that they may be looking to revitalize the former reality series The Contender for the network. However, internally some within the network are arguing that it makes more sense to spend that money, roughly $25 million, on buying big fights. That number isn’t too far off from HBO’s and Showtime’s boxing budgets these days according to Dan Rafael who broke this story.
- Jeff Horn, who has recently booked an upcoming title defense against Gary Corcoran in December, is looking to stage his next fight against Conor McGregor. That won’t happen, but as long as someone is throwing out Mystic Mac’s name, boxing sites will run with it to get the clicks. Just ignore it.
- Mikkel Kessler’s November ring return has been delayed following his diagnosis with Lyme disease. This is a tick borne illness that anyone who spends time in the outdoors knows looms as a threat. It is painful and exhausting, but thankfully also treatable. Kessler is on back the shelf for now though.
- Marco Huck announced that he is moving to heavyweight from here on out. The German based star was along a force at cruiserweight, but the new wave of titlists and contenders in that division have largely defeated him. A rematch at heavyweight with Alexander Povetkin does make some sense as many though Huck upset him in his one fight up at the weight in 2012, but I honestly don’t see that fight or any other ending well at heavyweight. Huck is an old 32 now. Being undersized isn’t going to fix that.
