Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) appears to be finally adding a complement of regular television broadcasting to their broadcasts, signaling a renewed sort of partnership between the promotional company and Amazon Prime with their original deal having pertained to the latter allowing PBC to only broadcast pay-per-view (PPV) events through their platform.
According to ESPN’s Mike Coppinger, PBC has managed to convince Amazon Prime to broadcast non-PPV events, but its first-slated show for August has been postponed after one of its headlining fighters, American super middleweight (168 lbs) contender Trevor McCumby (28-0, 21 KO’s), pulled out of a planned August 17th bout versus Caleb Plant (22-2, 13 KO’s) due to an injury.
With PBC having apparently not found a suitable fighter to substitute McCumby, the entire planned August 17th event has been scrapped. Plant, 32, has not fought since March of last year where he suffered a unanimous decision (UD) loss to #1 168 lbs contender David Benavidez (29-0, 24 KO’s).
Prior to the cancellation, Plant had unofficially announced his fight with McCumby through Instagram last week. The news of he postponement likely means the planned event will be rescheduled a month or two later.
Notably, PBC and Amazon Prime have yet to announce this new deal between them where regular [non-PPV] television (TV) programming of PBC’s fights will be facilitated. The lack of regular non-PPV broadcasts had been considered a steep disadvantage to PBC, with Matchroom chairman Eddie Hearn having―earlier this year―notably explained the need for promotions to regularly stage non-PPV fights in order to remain profitable.
The lack of any official press release regarding this new development of regular TV broadcasting for PBC perhaps signifies there is no such deal in place between the two parties, or the planned Plant-McCumby event could have been a one-off TV-broadcasted show. Either way, it appears that PBC still has some work to do in the department of securing their position within the boxing industry, which will be highly dependent on how supporting Amazon Prime is towards PBC.
