Boxing Media Watch

Saturday night's edition of HBO's 24/7 series on the upcoming Miguel Cotto-Manny Pacquiao fight may be the most riveting because of the fighters' stories, and because it was the most dangerous and treacherous to film.

The cable network's camera crews had to brave the violent surges of a deadly typhoon which battered the Philippines, as did Pacquiao, who bravely trained under tumultuous, life-threatening conditions.

See what HBO's president of sports, Ross Greenburg, had to say about the network's latest undertaking below.

Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield shook hands on The Oprah Winfrey Show Friday, with Holyfield saying he has forgiven Tyson for biting him in their heavyweight title fight in 1997.

"The most important thing is to forgive, and I forgave him," Holyfield said. "It wasn't really as bad as they made it out to be. Things happen for a reason, but it's how you handle it."

HBO's 24/7 boxing show is a brilliant way to hype a pay-per-view fight. The four-part documentary takes viewers inside the lives of the fighters, and by the end of it, you can't help but want to see these two go at it.

But while watching the current 24/7 series, which is hyping Saturday night's fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Floyd Mayweather Jr., you also can't help but want to see Marquez give Mayweather a beating. And that raises a question: Is the show unfair to Mayweather?

By ramping up their promotional efforts for the Sept. 19 Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez pay-per-view fight, some might say that HBO and Golden Boy Promotions are going old school. The fight will be shown at 170 movie theaters across the country and available in over 350,000 hotel rooms. Couple that with what seems like an aggressive usage of the Internet, mobile phones and social networking tools to promote the fight, and it's safe to say that they are doing everything in their power to make this event available to as many people as possible.

That's good news for boxing fans. Even better news is that they are finally using a mega-fight to spotlight some fresh, new talent to the masses. So while all those promotional efforts might be effective for one particular fight, the decision to stack this event with a solid undercard may prove to be the smartest decision HBO and Golden Boy ends up making.

When it comes to hyping pay-per-view fights, the gold standard has been set by HBO with its 24/7 series, which chronicles the lives of the boxers, both in and out of the gym, in the weeks leading up to their big fights.

As HBO prepares for its September 19 pay-per-view fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Juan Manuel Marquez, the 24/7 series is back, and this time the first episode is being made available, in full, online.

Video of Mayweather/Marquez 24/7: Episode 1 is below (NSFW, some offensive language is used.)

Over the course of his boxing career, Floyd Mayweather has probably spent as much time working on his trash talk as he has hitting the speed bag. But as Mayweather prepares to step into the ring with Juan Manuel Marquez -- his first fight in almost two years -- he has a new forum for talking trash: Twitter.

Yes, Mayweather is the latest in a long, long line of athletes to get on Twitter, and he'll be using it to hype his September 19 pay-per-view fight.

Arturo Gatti, the boxing great who was killed last weekend in Brazil, will always be remembered for his three epic fights with Micky Ward -- a trilogy as good as any in boxing history. Ward said this week that he was shocked by the death of Gatti, whose wife is currently in custody and charged with his murder.

The fight that every boxing fan wants to see is Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao in the battle of the two best pound-for-pound boxers in the world. But before we get to see that, we're going to have to hope Mayweather beats Juan Manuel Marquez on September 19, and Pacquiao wins his tentatively scheduled fight with Miguel Cotto on November 14.

Well, there's good news for boxing fans: Mayweather thinks that's going to happen. Mayweather is, of course, always confident in his own abilities, so it's no surprise that he picks himself to beat Marquez. But he also offered a prediction about how Pacquiao vs. Cotto will go, saying that Cotto no longer appears to be an elite boxer after the beating he took at the hands of Antonio Margarito last summer.

Showtime has announced the creation of a six-boxer super middleweight tournament that has fans both excited and puzzled.

The excitement comes from the fact that the six boxers -- Mikkel Kessler (right), Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Jermain Taylor, Andre Ward and Andre Dirrell -- are some of the world's best super middleweights and are virtually guaranteed to provide several exciting fights leading up to the finale in 2011.

The puzzlement comes from the fact that a tournament like this -- including a round-robin group stage that awards points for wins (and a bonus point for a knockout) in '09 and '10, followed by a single-elimination four-boxer playoff in '11 -- has never been done before. There are also questions about the selection of the boxers, and whether all six boxers will stick around to the tournament's conclusion.

So I asked Showtime boxing boss Ken Hershman on Monday to explain how he can pull this whole thing off. The full interview is below.

The upcoming heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Ruslan Chagaev will have an American television home, as ESPN Classic has decided to show the fight live from Germany on Saturday afternoon, June 20.