Calzaghe-Kessler in the wee small hours by Ian McNeilly Sep 23rd 2007

British fans who had been expecting the super-middle unification fight between Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler to be on at UK prime time had better think again and get the matchsticks at the ready. A press release states that the bout is to "be moved to later in the evening to accommodate US boxing fans". The fight will now be broadcast at 9pm Eastern Time on HBO World Championship Boxing, Saturday November 3rd (Sunday morning for us).  Setanta TV are showing it in the UK and as they had been the only broadcaster announced until this week, British fight fans were hoping action would commence at European timings.  In a quirk of GMT arrangements with the US being on summer time a week longer than the UK (clocks go back the last weekend of October here), this means that the delay is only four hours, meaning that action should begin for us not long after 1am. This is an inconvenience for British fans, especially for those who might already have bought tickets (more than 30,000 are said to have been sold already for the Millennium Stadium fight) and had transport plans in place rather than booking ridiculously overpriced Cardiff hotel rooms - if they could even get one of those. Then again, having been to Cardiff, I'm not so sure if anyone would be relying on public transport after 10pm anyway. The magnitude of the fight will hopefully help ease any inconvenience caused. This is another reminder of the harsh realities of the boxing business these days which seem to mean that US television money is vital to making the really big fights - even if there is no US boxer involved. “We have seen the tremendous response this fight is generating with the fans and the sports press and we put our heads together with our UK broadcaster, Setanta, and came up with a plan to maximize the exposure,” said promoter Frank Warren. “We discovered that the weekend of the fight is the one time when there is only a four hour time difference between ET and GMT in the UK making it possible to start the show at a reasonable time for the UK and prime time in the States. When we approached HBO about the possibility of going live, they were ecstatic when we found a way to do this and immediately cleared their schedule to make it possible. This was a case of all the stars lining up just right.”

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