Podcast: Showtime's Espinoza on Davis-Garcia, Spence-Crawford talks
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Welcome to a special edition of the Fight Freaks Unite podcast. I arrived in Las Vegas on Wednesday to cover Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia, the biggest fight of the year so far, which takes place on Saturday (Showtime PPV and PPV.com, 8 p.m. ET) at T-Mobile Arena. I had a chance to sit down and interview Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza at length on two topics. We did a deep dive on making the very difficult Davis-Garcia deal and many other aspects of the fight and what it means for boxing. Then we turned to the ongoing saga of trying to finalize a deal for an undisputed welterweight title fight between Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford. Espinoza discussed many aspects of that process, where they stood as of Wednesday evening, shot down some terrible misreporting about the talks and much more.
Please give it a listen! Also: rate, review, subscribe and enjoy!
We will bring you the usual Big Fight Weekend preview podcast late Thursday/early Friday. Let me know what you think of this special edition by leaving your comments.
Espinoza photo: Esther Lin/Showtime
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Excellent interview. Hopefully the success of this partnership leads to more crossovers. Munguía/Charlo in particular. The whole Bud/Spence thing is fascinating. I'm guessing the fact that Showtime/PBC can't even match Top Rank's $5m minimum guarantee per fight. Because it doesn't make financial sense. Is what is really sticking in Bud's craw. Bud has never really been one to help promote himself. The inactivity of both Spence and Crawford, has this "Super Fight" as cold as ice right now. No one but the Boxing Die Hards care at this point. And a lot of them are fed up with the whole ordeal.