Have Box Nation dropped the ball (again)

In Germany this evening we have one of the first stand out cards of the year with the following fights:
Ruslan Chagaev (27-2-1, 17) v Kerston Manswell (22-3, 17)
Denis Boytsov (29-0, 24) v Darnell Wilson (24-13-1, 20)
Rakhim Chakhkiev (11-0, 9) v Alexander Kotlobay (21-2-1, 15)
Juergen Braehmer (36-2, 19) v Jose Maria Guerrero (29-2-1, 11)

The card also features Ina Menzer, Vitali Tajbert, Firat Arslan, Marcel Meyerdiercks and the debut of Evgeny Tishchenko (a 6'5 Cruiserweight). To me this is a card that should be getting shown on British TV. Sky have a good excuse not to show it, they have Carl Frampton's card on instead (nowhere near as good but it does have British interest) though a "specialised" boxing channel which is instead showing repeats hasn't got an excuse at all.

Now I have been incredibly harsh (harsh but fair) on Box Nation since it started but for the "Home of Boxing" not to be picking up THIS card is a disgrace (a big disgrace). Boxnation promised it's subscribers 2 cards a weekend though this weekend has given it's loyal and paying customers NOTHING new (unless you count Steve Bunce's talk show "new", personally I can't stand the jumped up fat man). If you are a paying customer you must be annoyed that they haven't picked up this card, especially considering they didn't have anything on last Saturday either.

In fact (unless I'm making a counting error somewhere) Boxnation have only covered 3 shows all year (and we are 4 weeks into the year), that is less than 1 show a week..in fact rather than paying £1.25 a show as first advertised, the customers have paid £3.33 a show. So when one like this comes along why didn't they do everything they could to snap up the rights? A card like this is genuinely worth £3.33 to boxing fans, many other cards aren't. Here we have 4 interesting fights, a number of former world champions (Chagaev, Arslan, Braehmer, Tajbert and Menzer) and a number of future champions the card is genuinely stacked.

Last weekend Boxnation gave us a single card on Friday night with Derry Matthews facing unheralded Emiliano Marsili for the IBO. The main event was one of the best fights of January (genuinely good fight) but the under-card was a complete joke which saw the chief support being Steve Harkin v Jason Ball in a bout that looked like it could have been 2 drunks outside the Red Lion on a Friday night. I really cannot fathom how that Harkin v Ball fight ever made it's way near TV it was indefensible and shows all the skill levels of some untrained drunks (despite that it was entertaining for all the wrong reasons).

Thankfully it seems I'm no longer the only one sick of the channel promising the world but delivering nothing. Earlier this week James DeGale seemed to say (quite clearly) that he and Frank Warren were done, Frankie Gavin publicly complained about the money he had been offered to fight Jason Cook and the upcoming Tony Bellew v Danny McIntosh fight saw the purse bids won by Dave Caldwell instead of Bellew's promoter Warren. To say the least these have been interesting developments.