''The Big Fight Live'' is a British boxing television programme, broadcast by

ITV Sport ITV Sport is a sport producer for ITV. It was formed following the merger between Granada Sport and Central Sport.World of Sport and as separate programmes. Until 1984, they were largely shut out of British domestic boxing due to a cartel operated by promoters such as Jarvis Astaire, Harry Levene and Mickey Duff, who had contracts with the BBC. ITV obtained the rights to show fights promoted by then-rebel promoter Frank Warren's Sports Network in 1984. Several years later, a contract with

Barry Hearn Barry Maurice William Hearn (born 19 June 1948) is an English sporting events promoter and the founder and President of promotions company Matchroom Sport. Through Matchroom, Hearn is also involved in many sports including snooker, darts, pool ...

followed as a result of his friendship with

Greg Dyke Gregory Dyke (born 20 May 1947) is a British media executive, football administrator, journalist, and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has had a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing ' ...

, while the network also worked closely with other promoters including Don King. Until the early 1990s, the programmes were titled ''Boxing'', ''World Championship Boxing'', "The Big Fight Live" (a name occasionally used in the 1980s) or shown as part of ''Midweek Sport Special''. Until 1985, boxing continued to be shown on World of Sport, before the programme was axed. In the early 1990s, most boxing on ITV was branded ''The Big Fight Live''. The exceptions to this were programmes on regional ITV, which used a variety of names, with "Fight Night" and "Seconds Out" being among the names used in some regions, while some overnight highlights programmes featuring less well-known or non-British fighters still used the "World Championship Boxing" title. During the 1980s, "Fight Night" promoted the careers of boxers like Errol Christie, whose fights featured on ITV and not the rival BBC. However, "The Big Fight Live" or "The Big Fight" (for highlights programmes), featuring its bright yellow and black branding and its dramatic theme tune became the consistent brand used for all of ITV's main network boxing coverage. This was a particularly fruitful period for ITV's boxing coverage, as they featured fights involving boxers such as

Nigel Benn Nigel Gregory Benn (born 22 January 1964) is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1987 to 1996. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the WBO middleweight title in 1990 and the WBC super-middleweight t ...

Chris Eubank Christopher Livingstone Eubank (born 8 August 1966) is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 1998. He held the WBO middleweight and super-middleweight titles between 1990 and 1995, and is ranked by BoxRec as the third ...

and

Naseem Hamed Naseem Hamed (born 12 February 1974), nicknamed Prince Naseem and Naz, is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1992 to 2002.. Retrieved 25 February 2016. He held multiple featherweight world championships, including the WBO ti ...

. These were produced by

LWT London Weekend Television (LWT) (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 un ...

for the ITV Network, and drew large audiences. The decline of ITV's boxing portfolio began in mid-1994 when

took

and his stable of fighters to

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It h ...

. At the start of 1996,

won the rights to show Sports Network (Frank Warren promoted) fights, leaving ITV with only occasional boxing for the following ten years. Their only networked boxing during this period were a few fights involving

Shea Neary James Patrick "Shea" Neary ( ; born 18 May 1968) is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1992 to 2000. He held the WBU light-welterweight title from 1996 to 2000, and challenged once for the Commonwealth light-welterweight t ...

, thanks to a contract with Merseyside promoter John Hyland. Other bouts were shown on ITV2 and the

ITV Sport Channel ITV Sport Channel was a short-lived digital sport television channel, that was owned by Carlton Communications and Granada plc. It was launched on 11 August 2001 and closed on 12 May 2002, precipitating ITV Digital's collapse over a month late ...

, while ITV2 also ran a fortnightly magazine show called "Boxing First". This was presented by Russ Williams with Steve Bunce as a regular studio pundit, and other studio guests. The programme featured highlights of fights not shown live on UK television, as well as features. Other boxing was shown on a regional basis, but this was rare. In May 2005, ITV returned to the ring, with live coverage of Amir Khan's last fight before becoming professional against Mario Kindelán. It achieved a peak audience of 6.3 million viewers, encouraging ITV to reach a long-term agreement to show future Sports Network boxing promotions. In June 2005, the network won back the rights to show Frank Warren's Sports Network fights and as a result broadcast fights involving Amir Khan,

Joe Calzaghe Joseph William Calzaghe ( ; born 23 March 1972) is a Welsh former professional boxer who competed from 1993 to 2008. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the unified WBA (Undisputed), WBC, IBF, WBO, '' Ring'' magazi ...

, Danny Williams, Audley Harrison and others. As of September 2007, their coverage of Sports Network promotions was shared with

Setanta Sports Setanta Sports is a sports television company based in Dublin, Ireland broadcasting throughout select Eurasian. The company was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to international audiences. The company previo ...

, with only Amir Khan fights remaining with ITV. On 6 September 2008, Amir Khan switched to Sky from ITV, signalling the end of the network's contract with Frank Warren's Sports Network. Later that month, ITV announced a 2-year deal with Hennessy Sports for coverage of 26 fights. The majority of fights were due to be screened on ITV4 and once again were to be hosted by Jim Rosenthal, who returned to ITV having previously been sacked in early 2008. Amir Khan moved back to ITV in 2010, with his fight against

Paulie Malignaggi Paul "Paulie" Malignaggi (; ; born November 23, 1980) is an American former professional boxer who competed from 2001 to 2017 and has since worked as a boxing commentator and analyst. He held world championships in two weight classes, including ...

broadcast live in the early hours of Sunday 15 May 2010. It also broadcast delayed coverage of at least one Carl Froch fight in America the night after it took place around this period, along with a number of other matches Shortly afterwards, ITV stopped screening any boxing coverage, believing it not to be commercially viable.

Presentation

The main host of ITV Boxing was

Jim Rosenthal Jim Rosenthal (born 6 November 1947) is an English sports presenter and commentator. In a long broadcasting career, Rosenthal has presented coverage of many sports including football, rugby, automotive racing, boxing and athletics. He has covere ...

, who returned to the programme after presenting ITV's Formula One coverage from 1997, on its return in 2005. Barry McGuigan left Sky Sports in 2005 to continue his role as a pundit on ITV. Commentary was provided by John Rawling and Duke McKenzie.

Gabriel Clarke Gabriel Clarke is a British TV journalist and documentary filmmaker. Clarke earned an English Literature degree from the University of London and began his journalistic career with local newspapers in Somerset and Bristol. He started his s ...

provided reports and interviews with the boxers. The main event was usually shown on the ITV Network while undercard matches were often televised on

ITV4 ITV4 is a British free-to-air television channel which was launched on 1 November 2005. It is owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc, and is part of the ITV network. The channel has a line-up that consists of sports, cult classi ...

. Before 1996, the main commentators had been Reg Gutteridge and Jim Watt, both of whom moved to Sky while continuing to commentate for the few boxing shows ITV televised in the late 1990s, which were presented by Russ Williams. Graham Beecroft and Nick Halling commentated on boxing on a regional basis during the late 1990s, while Halling was also the commentator on Boxing First.

2015 Onwards

In 2015 ITV started screening live boxing matches once again beginning with Carl Frampton's fight against Chris Avalos. On 13 December 2016, ITV announced that Chris Eubank Jr. would fight for the IBO World Championship live on a new

pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program gu ...

channel called ITV Box Office under 'The Big Fight Live' name, bringing an end to the 7-year hiatus of the programme not being on TV. In December 2018, ITV announced a ground-breaking new deal with Haymon Sports and Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) to bring exclusive coverage of PBC world-class boxing events to ITV. The collaboration was the first time that Haymon Sports and PBC has partnered with a UK broadcaster to stage boxing events regularly in the UK. The exclusive three-year deal guarantees a minimum of 15 televised events each year, to be shown free on ITV, ITV4 and as pay-per-view events on ITV Box Office. The first programme of the new deal was the IBF Super Middleweight title fight between Jose Uzcategui and Caleb Plant in the early hours of Monday 14 January 2019, UK time, which was broadcast live on ITV4. Plant, the challenger, won the fight on points. ITV took the feed from host broadcaster

Fox Sports Fox Sports is the brand name for a number of sports channels, broadcast divisions, programming, and other media around the world. The ''Fox Sports'' name has since been used for other sports media assets. These assets are held mainly by the Fo ...

and Ronald McIntosh provided voiceovers for UK viewers when the host broadcaster was on commercial breaks.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Big Fight Live, The 1984 British television series debuts 1980s British sports television series 1990s British sports television series 2000s British sports television series 2010s British sports television series 2020s British sports television series Boxing television series ITV (TV network) original programming ITV Sport

Presentation

2015 Onwards

See also

References

External links