SiriusXM inks deal with PBC to air boxing on radio

Bob Velin | USA TODAY Sports

Premier Boxing Champions has brought the sweet science back to three of the four major free television networks this year.

And starting Saturday, PBC will bring boxing back to where it all started -- on the radio.

SiriusXM, the satellite radio giant, announced Monday that it has signed a deal to broadcast PBC series events on its network.

Live coverage on SiriusXM kicks off with Saturday's NBC-TV fight card at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., with the main event featuring undefeated junior welterweight champion Danny "Swift" Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs) against former champion Lamont Peterson (33-2-1, 17 KOs). The co-main event features undefeated middleweight and Brooklyn resident Peter "Kid Chocolate" Quillin (31-0, 22 KOs) against WBO champion Andy Lee (34-2, 24 KOs).

The broadcast will air on Sportszone, Channel 92, beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

SiriusXM's broadcast team is led by blow-by-blow announcer Randy Gordon, a former Ring Magazine editor and New York Athletic Commission chairman, color analyst Gerry Cooney, the former heavyweight boxer, and nationally syndicated radio host Sway Calloway is the ringside reporter.

Boxing's history on radio goes back to the 1920s and '30s, when fans huddled around the radio listening to legendary announcers such as Graham McNamee describe in great detail the title fights of the day.

Even through the golden years of the 1970s when another legendary announcer, Don Dunphy, brought the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fights to life, radio was the medium where many boxing fans got their fight fix. Closed circuit or Theater TV, the main telecaster of heavyweight championship boxing in those days, was too costly for most.

Steve Cohen, SiriusXM's senior vice president of sports programming, said that while the company airs NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL broadcasts and every game of the NCAA tournament, none of those are produced by SiriusXM.

"So we decided, if we really want this we're going to have to go out and do this ourselves," Cohen told USA TODAY Sports. "We did some with horse racing, and we did it at a very high level. We won an Eclipse award with Dave Johnson, we've produced Breeders' Cups, and the Belmont Stakes, and now in doing this with boxing, we're so excited about it, especially from a production standpoint, and everybody wants to get involved."

Cohen said Gordon has listened to several classic boxing matches on radio to get a feel for how he needs to deliver the action.

"It's so different from television because you're really the eyes of the listening audience," Cohen said. "And you need to take them everywhere the fighters are in the ring: center of the ring, up against the ropes, and let them know what's going on. With that said, if you're doing your job correctly as a boxing play-by-play guy on the radio, you won't hear much from the analyst until after the round. That's the way it was done."

Cohen wants listeners to feel like they're at ringside, taking in all the sights and sounds.

"We're going to have the ring all miked up through the TV partners that are working with Al Haymon, and they've been awesome in providing us that natural sound, and so we want to bring this right through your radio," Cohen said. "We want you to hear the guys hitting each other, we want you to hear the corners. We want to bring you the whole visual of what's going on in that ring and all the sounds that go along with that through your radio."

SiriusXM will broadcast more than 10 Premier Boxing Champions events in 2015. Future broadcasts will be announced at a later date.