Premier Boxing Champions
Manager Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions series features top-level fights all around the country (and across the television landscape). Just look at the names in the PBC promotion. Champs and ex-champs and legit prospects abound: Deontay Wilder, Adonis Stevenson, David Benavidez, Jermall and Jermell Charlo, Jarrett Hurd, Errol Spence Jr., Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Mikey Garcia, Leo Santa Cruz, Gary Russell Jr., Abner Mares, Brandon Figueroa, Danny Garcia, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Jarrett Hurd, and Gervonta Davis. Living relic Manny Pacquiao is on board. Surprise titlist Andy Ruiz Jr. is in the PBC camp, too.
Premier Boxing Champions History
The first PBC card was in 2015, and it was broadcast on NBC, with Keith Thurman as the headliner and Adrien Broner and Abner Mares on the undercard. There've been a lot of fireworks since then, heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder providing many of them. In 2016, Wilder knocked out Artur Szpilka in the ninth round with a cannon shot from his right hand. The following year, Wilder swarmed challenger Bermane Stiverne, knocking him down three times before the fight was stopped in the waning moments of the first round. Stiverne managed just two jabs and two power shots in all.
In 2018, Wilder took on Luiz Ortiz at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in one of the great bouts of the promotion's brief history. The cautious, pawing exchanges of the early rounds gave way in the fifth to a big right from Wilder that buckled Ortiz's knees and then a second right that sent him to the floor. Ortiz came back and nearly knocked out Wilder in the seventh. The champ rallied, and in the 10th he overwhelmed Ortiz, ending the fight with a huge right uppercut.
But the PBC is a lot more than Wilder. In September 2019, welterweight Errol Spence Jr., fresh off his domination of Mikey Garcia, bested Shawn Porter in a frenetic split decision, unifying the IBF and WBC belts and moving Spence closer to the top of the pound-for-pound rankings. And don't forget the old guy. In 2018, Pacquiao, on the cusp of turning 40, joined the promotion and soon recorded a pair of solid decisions, first against Adrien Broner and then against the dangerous Keith Thurman.