Fight of the Week

After NBC's cancellation of "The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports" in the spring of 1960, ABC took over the prime time boxing program, although it was renamed as the "Fight of the Week". Legendary boxing commentator Don Dunphy did the blow-by-blow description of the bouts each week. They took place on Saturday beginning in October 1960 and through September 1963. From there, it moved to Friday nights, where they ended up until ABC finally cancelled prime time boxing altogether after the bout of September 11, 1964, permanently ending eighteen years of regularly scheduled prime time boxing on U.S. broadcast network television. One reason for the downturn of televised boxing in the United States during the early 1960s may have happened on March 24, 1962, when Emile Griffith defeated Benny "The Kid" Paret for the Welterweight Championship at New York's Madison Square Garden. Paret was carried from the ring unconsciously, and on April 3 of that year, died as a result of his injuries that he had sustained in that bout.

Occasionally, between September 1964 and the mid-1980s, there had been a number of boxing events on broadcast television (network and syndication). Since then, however, boxing has found a home with several pay-per-view specials, along with monthly, or semi-monthly scheduled bouts on premium channels such as HBO and Showtime, along with the long-running series "USA Tuesday Night Fights" on USA Network (1982-1998). Currently, the weekly cable bouts can be seen on ESPN2.