No Holds Barred: Keith Thurman, Luis Collazo, PBC at Mid-Year

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) and former welterweight champion Luis Collazo (36-6, 19 KOs), who fight Saturday, July 11, at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa, Florida. This fight will be telecast live in the U.S. on ESPN, and will be the first on that network for the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) series.

We spoke with both Keith Thurman and Luis Collazo on Tuesday's media conference call.

We also evaluate the progress of the PBC in the first half of 2015, and conclude that while a number of errors have been made, overall PBC deserves a grade of B or B-, with many more positive accomplishments than negative ones. Still, PBC needs to do more in terms of making stars out of its fighters and creating buzz, as well as utilizing the Internet and social media better than they do now.

While PBC has been running live boxing shows on network and basic cable channels almost every week since March, promoters like Top Rank and Golden Boy, who could not get such exposure despite being around far longer than PBC, have opted to sue PBC, instead of changing their ways. We discuss why these suits are mostly baseless, although the issue of PBC acting as both a promoter and manager for fighters, especially when TV plays such a key role in the business of boxing, will have to be addressed.

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The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

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