"The time of non-televised undercards is going to be over on Showtime. There's going to be no more non-televised undercards because for the big fights, like this one here, undercards will be televised. They will be televised, they will be part of the broadcast which will be shown on one of the Showtime platforms," stated Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, who revealed that the entire undercard of the February 11 rematch between Victor Ortiz and Andre Berto will in fact be televised. Schaefer made the announcement at yesterday's press conference, where the new Executive Vice President and General Manager of Showtime Sports and Event Programming, Stephen Espinoza, was also on hand to give more details.
"We will be airing what used to be non-televised undercards will now be airing on SHO Extreme the time before the fight. The running time of that will be To Be Determined based on the undercard parts of the schedule, and then beginning at 10 PM Eastern and Pacific, we'll go live on Showtime Network with the opening two bouts and the main bout," Espinoza explained. It's a move that backs his claim that they plan to go head-to-head with rival network HBO as they look to give fans quality events. "The message is that we will be opportunistic and that we will compete at the highest level for the most quality events," Espinoza would recently tell RingTV.com. "The message that we're sending is that in order to compete for high-level, high-quality, compelling events, that we will spend money. That's the bottom line."
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