Prime Video’s March 30 inaugural pay-per-view boxing event suffered a body blow Monday when former boxing champion Keith Thurman withdrew from the card’s main event title fight with Tim Tsyzu due to injury.

Tsyzu will now fight Sebastian Fundora for the vacant WBC super weltrweight world title, according to Prime Video and fight promotion company Premier Boxing Champions. Thurman, a former welterweight champion, was forced to withdraw after suffering a bicep injury in training, according to PBC. Fundora had already been preparing to compete in the PPV card's opening fight before being moved up to the main event.

Other fights on the fight card include the co-main event bout between WBA Super Lightweight World Champion Rolando Romero and Isaac Cruz, WBA Middleweight World Champion Erislandy Lara against Michael Zerafa and WBC Flyweight World Champion Julio César Martínez against Angelino Cordova. 

The PPV boxing event is the first for Prime Video under its multi-year rights deal with Premier Boxing Champions, reached this past December. 

Also: Prime Video Punches Up Live Sports Lineup with Premier Boxing Champions Distribution Deal

Prime Video and Premier Boxing Champions will distribute their inaugural joint pay-per-view boxing match on March 30, headlined by the Keith Thurman-Tim Tszyu super welterweight fight. 

The fight card, the first as part of a multiyear deal between Premier Boxing and Prime Video, will also feature bouts between junior welterweight champion Rolando Romero and Isaac Cruz, middleweight champion Erislandy Lara against Michael Zerafa and super welterweights Sebastian Fundora and Serhii Bohachuk, according to Prime Video.

The PPV fight card, promoted by TGB Promotions, will be available to purchase from Prime Video as well as traditional cable and satellite outlets. Prime Video and Premier Boxing did not disclose a suggested retail price for the PPV event. 

PBC's PPV fights were previously distributed by Showtime, which this past October announced it was dissolving its sports division at the end of 2023.  

“This first show on PBC on Prime Video is ham-packed with fan-friendly matchups featuring stars who are established as the best of their generation and new stars who are looking to make a claim to lead the next generation of champions,” TGB Promotions Tom Brown said in a statement. 

Fox Sports enters the pay-per-view boxing ring Saturday (February 5) to distribute the Keith Thurman-Mario Barrios welterweight boxing match as it gears up for what could be a busy year in the genre, according to executives.

The fight, which marks the former welterweight champion Thurman’s return to the ring for the first time since a 2019 split decision loss to Manny Pacquiao, is the first of what Fox Sports and promotion company Premier Boxing Champions hopes to be quarterly PPV boxing matches featuring some of the most popular and successful fighters in the sport.

 It also comes on the heels of a busy end-of-the-year lineup of Fox Sports boxing events, which included a Christmas night fight card on Fox broadcasting and a New Year’s Day PPV event featuring heavyweights Louis Ortiz and Charles Martin. 

Fox Sports executive VP, head of Programming and Scheduling Bill Wanger discusses the Thurman-Barrios fight as well as the company's PPV boxing strategy for 2022 in an interview with Multichannel News/Broadcasting & Cable senior content producer R. Thomas Umstead. An edited version of the interview appears below.

Picture This: What was most appealing to you about Thurman-Barrios from a pay-per-view perspective? 

Bill Wanger: With Keith, as one of the top stars in the sport, coming back from a bit of a hiatus and with Mario going up in weight class, I think it's a really intriguing fight. Also, the PBC put together a great undercard. 

PT: How do you see the PPV boxing landscape developing in 2022 and how aggressive will Fox Sports be in distributing PPV fights? 

BW:  I think there's room for a pay-view-event per quarter. In the ring [welterweight champion] Errol Spence is out there, as well as [middleweight champion] Canelo Alvarez and [former heavyweight champion] Deontay Wilder, so I think that there are plenty of opportunities to develop PPV events. One of the things we're focused on is putting some of the young up and coming stars in front of a large audience on Fox. At the end of the year we featured [super middleweight] David Morrell, [lightweight] Frank Martin, [middleweight] Joey Spencer and [welterweight] Vito Mielnicki Jr.  Having those young up and comers on Fox really helps grow their profile and is good for the sport.

PT: With so many viewing options fans have to watch sports, Is the pay-per-view boxing model still viable?

BW: Yes I do because fans are accustomed to it. If you put out a good product, they will pay for it, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I think it has a bright future. I also see PPV buys from digital continuing to grow. We’ve seen that since we’ve started doing pay-per-views at Fox back in 2019. Our digital buys as a percent of our overall buy continues to increase, and I see it growing. But the traditional way that people buy pay-per-view events through their cable or satellite system is still a very viable option for people and still represents the majority of the buys. 

PT: Are there any new technological innovations that Fox Sports will look to feature during its upcoming pay-per-view boxing events? 

BW: From a technological standpoint, we're very much focused on audio enhancements, bird's eye view camera angles, super slow motion and great storytelling. Some of the things that we're doing from a digital perspective to allow fans to get very up close and personal with the fighters is something that we call All-Access. We have embedded cameras on fight night that, for example, will follow Keith Thurman and Mario Barrios from their hotel to the arena to the locker rooms and really give fans a fly-on-a-wall perspective. It helps with the [PPV] buys because people get interested in what's going on and learn about the fights and then click the button to buy. 

Veteran welterweight boxing champion Manny Pacquiao turned back the clock to beat former undefeated champion Keith Thruman in a split decision during Fox Sports’ second pay-per-view boxing event.

The 40-year old Pacquiao knocked down Thurman in the first round and controlled the pace for much of the 12-round fight to run his record to 62-7-2. Thurman’s first loss dropped his record to 29-1.

In the aftermath of the fight, Pacquiao said he most likely would not fight again until 2020. Pacquiao could next face the winner of the Sept. 28 Errol Spence Jr.-Shawn Porter welterweight unification PPV fight, which Fox Sports and Premier Boxing Champions announced Saturday.

The undefeated Spence fought Mikey Garcia on Fox Sports' inaugural PPV boxing event in March, drawing more than 330,000 PPV buys, according to the company. 

RELATED:Fox Sports Takes Second Jab at PPV Boxing with Pacquiao-Thurman

Fox Sports continues its busy summer of televising live, marquee sports programming events this Saturday (July 20) as it steps into the pay-per-view boxing ring with the Manny Pacquiao-Keith Thurman welterweight championship boxing card promoted by Premier Boxing Champions. The company is hoping to build on the performance of its March Errol Spence-Mikey Garcia inaugural PPV boxing event, which drew more than 300,000 pay-per-view buys, according to company executives.

Fox Sports executive vice president and head of programming Bill Wanger discusses the company’s strategy in distributing the PPV boxing event, including using its lineup of high-profile summer sports events like the FIFA Women’s World Cup, baseball’s All-Star Game and the U.S. Open Golf Championship to promote Pacquiao-Thurman, which retails at a PPV suggested price of $74.99.

Why does Fox Sports consider the Pacquiao-Thurman fight a marquee pay-per-view event?

Obviously it starts with Manny Pacquiao, who is a living legend in the boxing world, going up against a legit competitor in Keith Thurman. Before [Thurman] was injured [Thurman had elbow surgery in May 2018], he was considered one of the best welterweights in the world. We consider this a heavyweight matchup of welterweights.

What are your PPV buy expectations for Pacquiao-Thurman?

We’re going to do better than Spence-Garcia, our first pay-per-view, which was in the 330,000 [buy] range. We’ll definitely be above that, although we’re not going to release any sort of estimates. To the boxing world -- and even to the casual boxing fan -- Manny versus Keith is a true 50-50 fight where you really don’t know who is going to win. That doesn’t always happen in boxing, so it's pretty special.

The summertime hasn’t been an ideal time to schedule a big pay-per-view fight -- does that concern you at all?

Quite frankly a little bit, but it just worked out in terms of timing from when Manny and Keith’s last fight was [both fighters fought this past January]. We’re coming off of out most-watched month ever across the Fox Sports networks with the [Women’s] World Cup, The US Open, NASCAR and the baseball All-Star game, so we feel we've had a pretty strong promotional platform. We’ve been running the sprockets off of our promo for the fight in those big sports events. We actually ran seven [promotional] elements for the fight during the All-Star Game. On fight night we’re going to have Caleb Plant fighting Mike Lee in a super welterweight fight that will air on Fox broadcast prior to the pay-per-view event starting, so we’re going to have a significant amount of people watching boxing on free television on Fox while promoting the pay-per-view card. That’s fairly unusual for a boxing event.

Is Fox Sports still looking at doing as many as six PP boxing cards in 2019?

Right now we’re looking in the four to five range which could go up. There's been some exciting things that have happened over the past couple of months in boxing where we could do some more potential pay-per-view events, including Andy Ruiz Jr.’s win over [former heavyweight champion] Anthony Joshua, which shocked the world and really attracted alot of casual fans back to boxing. We’ll see how things play out, but I think the future is really bright.

There’s been alot of boxing events distributed on various platforms so far this year. Does the increased exposure of the sport help or hurt Fox Sports’ efforts to develop marquee pay-per-view events?

I think it helps. Just on the various Fox Sports distribution platforms alone we’ve reached close to 20 million people through our live [boxing] events, studio shows and original programming. I think that we’re bringing attention to boxing, and we’re not so concerned about the competition. We’re growing our portfolio of boxing -- on Fox [broadcasting] alone, our [boxing] ratings are up 50% versus what they were a year ago. We’re in a good position. 

Showtime and HBO enter the TV boxing ring together on April 29 to co-televise the Vladimir Klitschko-Anthony Joshua heavyweight championship fight – the first time the two networks have come together to televise a non-pay-per-view boxing match.

After the fight however, the two networks will retreat into their neutral corners with two distinctly different strategies on distributing live boxing matches.

Showtime, which only a few years ago was arguably the most prolific distributor of marque pay-per-view fights in the industry, is now focusing on putting its biggest and best fights via its premium service and on broadcast television through its sister broadcast network CBS.

In fact, the network’s last high-profile PPV fight was Floyd Mayweather’s fairwell fight in September 2015 against Andre Berto. That came four months after Showtime and HBO hooked up to co-distribute the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight -- the most lucrative PPV event of all time.

Since then, Showtime has offered several quality primetime fights featuring the top names in boxing today, including welterweight champion, Keith Thurman, heavyweight champs Joshua and Deontay Wilder, and former champions Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, and Adrien Broner.

The network recently released its upcoming fight schedule that will offer big fights featuring light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson and welterweight champion Kell Brook among others, but none that will be offered on a PPV basis.

That leaves HBO as the main distributor of PPV boxing fights. The network, which has already distributed one high-profile PPV boxing event this year – the March Golovkin-Daniel Jacobs fight drew 170,000 buys according to published reports – will return to the PPV ring next week (May 6) with the highly-anticipated Canelo Alvarez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight. Also on tap for the pay network is a June 17 Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev light heavyweight championship rematch and a potential July PPV fight featuring Pacquiao.

As for tonight’s Klitschko-Joshua fight, Showtime will air the fight live this afternoon at 4:15 while HBO will distribute the bout on a taped delayed basis at 11 p.m.

ESPN’s inaugural Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) fight card Saturday night drew nearly 800,000 viewers, the network said Tuesday.

The July 11 event, headlined by the Keith Thurman-Luis Collazo welterweight championship bout, was the first event as part of a multi-year deal between ESPN and boxing promoter Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Championship series. The 800,000 viewers was up 110% over the 381,000 viewers generated by the network’s 2015 Friday Night Fights telecasts, said ESPN.

The main event bout, in which Thurman won in an eight round stoppage, averaged nearly 1 million viewers. The next PBC On ESPN telecast will take place Aug. 1 with the Danny Garcia-Paulie Malignaggi fight.  

ESPN will team with Premier Boxing Champions tonight (July 11) to air the Keith Thurman/Luis Collazo welterweight championship fight card – the first of several PBC On ESPN boxing events the 24-hour sports network will distribute as part of a multi-year deal.

The PBC On ESPN telecasts will represent a major upgrade from ESPN’s long-running Friday Night Fights boxing series. The network will utilize 11 cameras to shoot the fights – nearly double the number used for Friday Night Fights  -- and a 360-degree “Round-A-Bout” camera system about the ring comprised of 32 cameras which will allow viewers to see every punch and hit from all angles, according to network officials.

I had a chance to speak with Brian Kweder, senior director of programming and acquisitions at ESPN, and here’s what he and ESPN want you to know about the network’s PBC on ESPN telecasts.

PBC On ESPN Packs A Bigger TV Punch: “This is not Friday Night Fights that we’re delivering anymore; it’s definitely a bigger and better production. We have entered into the space that was previously the domain of the premium cable channels, so it’s important for fans to understand that we’re delivering major championship fights now and no longer dealing with young upstarts and the over the hill gang. Our telecasts will be more in line with how we treat some of the other big sports events like college football, NBA and MLB. It will be bigger and better than anything we’ve done for the sport of boxing."

PBC Delivers Better Talent, more competitive matches:– “The PBC is bringing a level of talent we’ve never seen on ESPN. Guys like Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia (scheduled to fight Paulie Malignaggi Aug. 1 on ESPN) – those guys we used to see either at very young stages of their career or when they are way over the hill. Now we’re getting these top notch boxers in their primes, which is the biggest difference.”

PBC On ESPN Riding Boxing's Growing Momentum: “Starting from [the May 2] Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, which went way off the [PPV performance] charts from a popularity standpoint, and then with the launch of the PBC on the various broadcast and cable networks as well as ESPN, people have begun to stand up and take notice of the sport again. Fights had been limited to PPV and premium cable for so many years, and now that they’re available to more viewers the [PBC ratings] are higher than we anticipated because you obviously have a bigger audience to choose from. Typically from a Friday Night Fights standpoint we would receive very little editorial coverage from the SportsCenters of the world,  but because these are such big events and the PBC is bringing quality fights to such a mass audience, it's also garnering the attention of our editorial folks who are starting to pay more attention to boxing.”