After many disappointing decades, American boxing fans once again have the thing they always seem to want: an undefeated homegrown heavyweight star with a big mouth and a big punch. His name is Deontay Wilder, and he appeared this week at Gleason’s Gym, in Dumbo, to endure a workout, or a reasonable facsimile of one. The audience was a few dozen reporters and hobbyists, who were crowded on the ring apron, and who were there to help Wilder spread the word about his upcoming fight, on Saturday night. Not all heavyweight boxers look like professional athletes, but Wilder does: he is six feet seven, lean and muscular; in person, he more closely resembles an average-size basketball player than a tall fighter. While his baby (also a heavyweight) snoozed ringside, Wilder shadowboxed and then punched some mitts, and then, during a brief media scrum, he mused about his desire to change children’s lives and, a few seconds later, his desire to end his opponent’s. “This is not a gentleman’s sport,” he said. “This is the only sport where you can kill a man and get paid for it at the same time—it’s legal. So why not use my right to do so?”

Since the heyday of Mike Tyson, it has sometimes seemed that the only people who care about boxing are hardcore fans—the obsessives whom you couldn’t drive off if you tried. And it often seemed that boxing was, indeed, trying. Major fights appeared late at night on premium cable, often HBO or Showtime; the biggest ones were available only on pay-per-view, a system that was well suited to a sport with a relatively small but absolutely dedicated audience. Fans were expected to pay fifty dollars per event, or more; non-fans were expected not even to know a big fight was happening.

The emergence of Wilder has coincided with the emergence of two other heavyweight kings, both British: Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, both of whom are also undefeated. It has coincided, too, with a revolution, as yet unfinished, in the way that boxing is broadcast and sold in America. Last year, HBO, long the premier broadcaster of boxing, announced that it was leaving the boxing business. (Full disclosure: I have done some reporting on the sport for HBO.) Showtime, by contrast, has remained dedicated to the sport. On Saturday night, Showtime will be broadcasting Wilder’s fight against Dominic Breazeale, a decent though perhaps not élite heavyweight, live from Barclays Center, in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, two other outlets have emerged. Boxing has recently become prominent on ESPN, which, in 2017, signed a broadcasting agreement with Top Rank, a leading boxing promoter. And there is a new player, an international sports-streaming platform with a name that sounds like a turn-of-the-century dot-com startup aimed at third graders: DAZN, pronounced, “Da Zone.”

Three exciting heavyweights, three ambitious platforms for boxing—what’s not to love? Indeed, this new era has already produced an enormously entertaining match, between Wilder and Fury, this past December, on Showtime pay-per-view. In the twelfth and final round, Wilder seemed to knock Fury out; everyone in the arena, including Wilder, seemed astonished when Fury somehow got back to his feet to finish the fight, which was ruled a draw. Fans immediately began asking for a rematch.

But then things got complicated, as things in boxing so often do. Last year, Joshua, who had previously competed on Showtime, moved to DAZN. In February, Fury signed up with Top Rank, which means he now fights on ESPN. And in March, Wilder rejected an offer from DAZN—reportedly more than a hundred million dollars for three fights—in order to stick with Showtime. The outcome was perfectly predictable, and perfectly absurd: the top three heavyweights are now affiliated with three different broadcast platforms. Each platform, having invested in its heavyweight, has an incentive to keep him away from the competition. (No executive wants to see one of his biggest stars competing on a rival network.) So all three are fighting, but they are not fighting each other. On June 1st, on DAZN, Joshua faces Andy Ruiz, Jr., a competent contender. And on June 15th, on ESPN+, an online-only network, Tyson Fury faces an obscure German contender named Tom Schwarz. The Wilder-Fury rematch has been postponed indefinitely.

One of the most significant things about Wilder’s fight with Breazeale is that Showtime subscribers won’t be asked to pay extra for it. Most boxing executives acknowledge that the pay-per-view model, which long sustained the sport, is under threat, as habits and technologies evolve; one of many problems is online piracy, which seems all but impossible to prevent. John Skipper, the former president of ESPN, is now the executive chairman of DAZN. (DAZN is mainly focussed on combat sports in the U.S., but it offers different sports in different parts of the world, including, in some countries, the N.F.L., the N.B.A., and FIFA.) When I asked him about pay-per-view, Skipper told me that the model wasn’t quite dead, but that it wasn’t healthy, either. “I think it’s fatally ill,” he said. “It’s just a question of how long it lingers.” DAZN aims to eliminate pay-per-view: its American subscription price is $99.99 per year, with no additional fees for big fights; its roster includes, in addition to Anthony Joshua, Saúl (Canelo) Álvarez, the most bankable star in the sport. Skipper is betting that boxing fans accustomed to paying eighty dollars for a single big fight will be happy to pay a hundred, instead, for a year of fights.

ESPN is making a different bet. ESPN+ costs $49.99 per year, which gives you access to a wide range of programming, including mixed martial arts—ESPN signed a deal last year with the U.F.C., the leading M.M.A. organization, which was reportedly worth $1.5 billion. But the biggest fights, whether boxing or U.F.C., will be available to subscribers only as pay-per-view broadcasts. Likewise, Showtime remains committed to pay-per-view, an aging but still potentially lucrative arrangement, especially in sports that tend to produce a handful of unmissable events every year. “There is a bit of an inconsistency between programming for the network and then putting the biggest fights on pay-per-view,” Stephen Espinoza, who runs sports programming at Showtime, told me. His hope is that, by not sending the Wilder-Breazeale fight to pay-per-view, he is giving boxing fans a reason to subscribe to Showtime, or not to unsubscribe.

Both Showtime and ESPN also have an advantage that DAZN lacks: the ability to draw in casual fans. Any household with a Showtime subscription can watch Wilder on Saturday night; doubtless, that population includes lots of people who have never heard of DAZN, and would never dream of signing up. And Showtime sometimes promotes its fighters on its sister network, CBS; earlier this year, Wilder was prominently featured during CBS coverage of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. ESPN can do even more to push boxing into the mainstream. Many sports fans have noticed that, in the past two years, boxing has become increasingly prominent on the network’s news and discussion programs. Seeing boxers discussed alongside basketball players and football players helps create the impression, or the misimpression, that boxing is a major sport.