''Fight of the Week'' was a live American professional boxing series that aired on ABC-TV from 1960 to 1964. After

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-TV's cancellation of '' The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports'' in the spring of

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, ABC took over the

prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

boxing program, although it was renamed ''Fight of the Week''. Legendary boxing commentator

Don Dunphy Don Dunphy (July 5, 1908 – July 22, 1998) was an American television and radio sports announcer specializing in boxing broadcasts. Dunphy was noted for his fast-paced delivery and enthusiasm for the sport. It is estimated that he did "blow-by ...

did the blow-by-blow description of the bouts, which took place on Saturday beginning in October 1960 through September 1963. From there, the series moved to Friday nights, where it continued until ABC finally canceled prime time boxing after the bout of September 11, 1964, permanently ending 18 years of regularly scheduled prime time boxing on

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broadcast network television. One reason for the downturn of televised boxing occurred on ''Fight of the Weeks the March 24, 1962 broadcast, when

Emile Griffith Emile Alphonse Griffith (February 3, 1938 – July 23, 2013) was a professional boxer from the U.S. Virgin Islands who won world titles in three weight divisions. He held the world light middleweight, undisputed welterweight, and middleweight t ...

defeated Benny "The Kid" Paret for the Welterweight Championship at

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. Paret was carried from the ring unconscious, and died several days later as a result of his injuries that he had sustained in that bout. ''Fight of the Week'' was consistently paired with a

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), though ...

program, ''

Make That Spare ''Make That Spare'' is a fifteen-minute bowling program that was broadcast on ABC from October 8, 1960, to September 11, 1964. Broadcast history The series was hosted by the former actor and nightclub singer Johnny Johnston except in the 1961-19 ...

'', throughout its entire run. In the event that the fight ran shorter than expected, ''Make That Spare'' would run longer to square out the hour, and vice versa. Occasionally, between September 1964 and the mid-

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, there were a number of boxing events on broadcast television (network and

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). Since then, however, boxing found a home with several

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 guid ...

specials, along with monthly, or semi-monthly scheduled bouts on premium channels such as

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

and

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, along with the long-running series ''

USA Tuesday Night Fights ''USA Tuesday Night Fights'' (formerly ''Friday Night Boxing'', ''Wednesday Night Fights'', ''Thursday Night Fights'') is a television boxing show. It aired from October 1, 1982, through August 25, 1998 on the USA Network; at one time it was the l ...

'' on

USA Network USA Network (simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. It was originally launched in 1977 as Madison ...

(1982–1998). Currently, the weekly cable bouts can be seen on

ESPN2 ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially fo ...

. ''Fight of the Week'' was also shown in the

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as part of the long-running

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Saturday afternoon sports programme ''

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''. The

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sponsorship was listed in the ''

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'', which was considered daring at the time because the BBC was generally resistant to hints of commercialism (and sponsored programmes were not allowed even on commercial TV in the UK until the early 1990s).

See also