HBO World Championship Boxing
HBO World Championship Boxing (in later years stylized in its title card as HBO Boxing – World Championship) is an American sports television series on premium television network HBO. It premiered on January 22, 1973 with a fight that saw George Foreman defeat Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica.
| HBO World Championship Boxing | |
|---|---|
WCB title card, from 2013 to 2018 | |
| Genre | Boxing telecasts |
| Presented by | Jim Lampley Max Kellerman Roy Jones Jr. |
| Starring | Various |
| Theme music composer | Ferdinand Jay Smith III |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original languages | English Spanish |
| No. of seasons | 45 |
| Production | |
| Production location | Various boxing stadiums |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | Various |
| Production company | HBO Sports |
| Original release | |
| Network | HBO HBO Latino truTV |
| Release | January 22, 1973 – December 8, 2018 |
| Related | |
| Boxing After Dark MetroPCS Friday Night Knockout | |
HBO's pay-per-view distribution arm, TVKO was founded in December 1990, and then launched in April 1991 with Evander Holyfield vs. George Foreman, becoming HBO PPV in 2001.
On February 3, 1996, HBO debuted a spin-off program, Boxing After Dark, with the fight between Marco Antonio Barrera and Kennedy McKinney as its inaugural telecast.
On September 27, 2018, HBO announced they would be dropping boxing from the network following its last televised match on October 27, though two airings on November 24 and December 8 were its last editions. Various issues in the boxing business, including the influx of streaming options (such as DAZN and ESPN+) and issues with promoters and competing entities such as Premier Boxing Champions, along with declining ratings and loss of interest in the sport among HBO's subscribers for other ring sports such as mixed martial arts and professional wrestling, made the continued carriage of the sport untenable. HBO's long-term move to upscale dramatic programming, an ownership transfer of parent WarnerMedia to AT&T, then Warner Bros. Discovery, where the company's sport division became focused on TNT as TNT Sports, and re-focus around the upcoming streaming service HBO Max also played a role in the decision, with an HBO executive commenting that "HBO is not a sports network". The network cancelled its last sports-related program, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, at the end of 2023.
In March 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery revived the HBO Boxing brand as an free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel that are available on Tubi and Amazon Freevee, that showcases some boxing bouts that aired on World Championship Boxing and Boxing After Dark, as well as some boxing-related episodes of 24/7.