UFC 132 Fight Card and the Pros & Cons of Sharing July 2nd with HBO Boxing
Bleacher Report’s Dale De Souza:
Weeks ago, ESPN.com reported that the long awaited-boxing bout between WBA Heavyweight (200+ lbs.) Champion David Haye and IBF/IBO/WBO/The Ring Magazine’s Heavyweight Champion Wladimir Klitschko finally landed on a set date and venue.
The Heavyweight bout—arguably the first Heavyweight bout in years that any non-religious follower of Boxing has given a damn about—takes place on July 2 at the Hamburg Imtech Arena in Germany.
Now that’d be an event to get excited for if UFC 132 wasn’t emanating from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on the same night.
Having a Heavyweight fight go up against an already stacked fight card with a Bantamweight title fight falls under the category of “risky F’N business”, especially when said Bantamweight title fight included Dominick Cruz defending against The Fighting Pride of Sacramento, California, Urijah Faber.
Couple it in with Wanderlei Silva vs. Chris Leben, Dong Hyun Kim vs. Carlos Condit, and the returns of Evan Dunham and George Sotiropoulos to action after their first true losses (that is, IF you still think Dunham got screwed against Sean Sherk at UFC 119 last September), and what you have is an event that would have easily justified the decision to have Haye and Klitschko fight the weekend before—possibly somewhere in which the results won’t leak out before the fight airs.
Nonetheless, this fight airs on the same day as UFC 132, and that’s regardless of whether you find out the results of it before it happens or not.
It’s not a big issue—Juan Manuel Marquez fought Floyd Mayweather on the same night as UFC 103, and Manny Pacquiao’s systematic destruction of Antonio Margarito just happened to be on the night of UFC 122.
That, plus some of HBO’s free World Championship Boxing and Boxing After Dark events have fallen on the same day as MMA events as well.
Still, it’s boom or bust when this Heavyweight bout contends with UFC 132, and here is how.