Sport on TV: You can’t afford to miss boxing’s brash and obnoxious big mouth

 
13 September 2013

The TV Guide considers itself the Floyd Mayweather Jr of columns about sitting on your hind quarters, watching sport and eating those salty crisps from M&S that are like tubes and wagon wheels and little crinkly things all in the same bag.

Why? Well, we’re a brash, obnoxious big mouth with a talent for self-promotion and a gambling habit, we’re nice with the hands and we get paid around $50million for every public performan… damn.

Okay, so we’re not quite Floyd TV-weather. But we’ll sure as eggs be staying up late this weekend to watch the real Floyd fight Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez: the highlight of the sporting weekend and the biggest boxing match of the year.

It’s live on BoxNation, which apparently means signing up for a £10-a-month subscription channel that, realistically, you’ll watch about twice or three times a year. (We’re not counting those occasions that you come home from the pub about 11pm with your eyes pointing in different directions, decide to stick some boxing on to sate your need for vicarious Friday-night aggro and fall asleep stone drunk within 17 seconds, Steve Bunce’s voice percolating through your dreams and a small stream of white drool creeping down the side of your gob like a dead man.)

But look, it’s worth it, not least since the undercard includes a tied-on stormer in Danny Garcia v Lucas Martin Matthysse. So just pay up and enjoy.

Now let’s rewind. Before all the fighting, there’s a tasty Saturday morning of international rugby, as the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship continues on Sky Sports 3. New Zealand v South Africa is the top-of-the-table clash: these two have 27 points between them while poor old Australia and Argentina, who meet in the later match, have only one.

Once that’s over, the international cricket season continues with England v Australia in the fourth one-dayer at Cardiff, although we’ve given up caring about that.

There’s also Manchester United v Crystal Palace at lunchtime on BT Sport 1, followed by Everton v Chelsea on Sky Sports 1 later on. And buzzing around on the fringes is the Great North City Games, in which the streets of Newcastle and Manchester host a full day of athletics in advance of Sunday’s Great North Run and Great Manchester Run.

It’s live on BBC1, which I suppose costs at least as much as BoxNation, via the licence fee, although on BBC1 you get Homes Under The Hammer and Street Patrol UK.

Anyway, all that is just a warm-up to the late-night pugilism, which the TV Guide will be sleeping off all day on Sunday.

I suppose we might wake up for Southampton v West Ham on Sky Sports 1 — although the chances of staying alert and sentient through that one don’t strike us as especially promising.

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