It's happened more than once the past several weeks and it happens again tomorrow night when HBO and Showtime each televise their own high-profile boxing events.

Kostya Tszyu takes on the challenge of Ben Tackie on Showtime and Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward do battle on HBO. At least the starting times are staggered so that boxing fans can watch both jr. welterweight tilts back-to-back, but that hasn't always been the case.

And you get the strong sense that it's bound to happen a few more times in the upcoming months. Jay Larkin of Showtime feels as though this is no coincidence and that his competition is counter-programming them and that development, he says, is not healthy for the game of boxing.

"Take a look at the last few weeks. We had a terrific show on April 20th, Calzaghe versus Brewer," stated Larkin. "It was terrific going in by all accounts on paper, everyone predicted it would be a real battle, it would be an exciting show. And in reality that's what it became and going in everyone expected it to be a terrific fight. It was a very difficult fight to make in a very important division. We made the fight and several weeks after we announced it, HBO announced Mayweather-Castillo.

"On April 27th, we had Cliff Etienne-Terrance Lewis on our Olympian card. Very entertaining fight, not as strategic as Calzaghe-Brewer but a very entertaining fight. And it was counter-programmed by HBO by Jameel McCline-Shannon Briggs and Johnny Tapia-Manuel Medina. Funny enough that it was supposed to be 'Boxing After Dark' card and for some reason they started it at 9:45 (15 minutes before Showtime's broadcast). The same thing happened on the 20th, they went to a 9:30 start.

"Now, we come to May, we announced Kostya Tszyu-Ben Tackie on May 18th sometime around January or February and several weeks or a month or so after we announced that, HBO announced Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti. Now we come to June 1st, where we had Ricky Hatton-Eamonn Magee in place and announced and they publicly negotiated and announced the Holyfield-Rahman, after the fact.

"So you've got four dates in a row where Showtime went out of it's way to make certain that those dates were clear of any conflicts on any other network, announced them months in advance to be certain they were no conflicts, only to be counter-programmed.

"It's very bad for boxing when that happens. It's cheating the fans and it's very short-sighted."

However, HBO's Xavier James disagrees with that notion.

"It's not counter-programming," claimed James, not surprisingly. "There's only so many weekends on which you can do a boxing event. You try to avoid major holidays, avoid other major sporting events and since were both doing a number of events, you have to run into situations where you have an event on the same day. So we're not trying to counter-program, we just don't have enough weekends on which to do fights."

Stuck in the middle of this are those that matter the most: the beleaguered boxing fans. Now, unless you have a satellite system that allows for the live feeds from the East Coast, you'd better have a quick trigger finger on the remote control. Or make a decision on which network has the better product on that night. According to James, that's the American way.

"I think competition is obviously a good thing," stated James. "And again, it's not a premeditated thing on our part, if you're on against someone who has boxing programming the same night, I think competition will bring out the best in terms of your programming."

But when does competition become saturation? Isn't there the chance that too many competing shows will divide an already small market?

"I think the hardcore boxing fan will watch both programs anyway," said James. "They'll tape one program and watch the other live depending on who has the best show on that particular night. So I don't think we're cannibalizing the hard-core boxing fan, but what you may do is lose some of the casual fans on a particular night when there are two boxing events. Even those kind of fans, if you have a marquee boxing event, they'll watch two. It really depends on how good your programming is."

James explained to MaxBoxing the process in which his network secures dates and plans fights.

"It's planned months in advance, unless there is an injury -- like the Barrera-Morales fight or the Oscar De La Hoya injury where we have to reshuffle our schedule. But usually, it's planned months in advance, it's planned in consideration to other major sporting events, holiday weekends, etc. So you want to pick the few weekends in that month that are best for boxing programming on this network. Sometimes Showtime has those same weekends. We try to not counter-program in terms of having a boxing event on the same night but sometimes it's unavoidable."

The competing networks are prohibited by anti-trust and collusion laws from openly discussing which dates they have secured for boxing broadcasts.

But it is funny that one of the reasons given by the HBO brass for aborting the planned July 13th date for Roy Jones' pay-per-view show was that Showtime would be having a telecast on that same night (in addition of course to the fact that Jones versus Clinton Woods would have been a terrible 'fight' and a box-office bust of 'Waterworld' proportions).

"If they canceled the Roy Jones fight because we were on that date, my question is why did they even schedule a Roy Jones fight knowing we were on that date," asked a bemused Larkin. "Just to say we have the ability to say we canceled it?"

But you get the sense that HBO is the 800-pound gorilla. And you know where they sit, right? Anywhere they want to. Afterall, in addition to it's huge boxing budget, they dwarf the subscription numbers of Showtime (approximately 30 million subscriptions to Showtime's 8 million, according to some figures) and that's not there only advantage.

"HBO has a tremendous amount of marketing muscle," points out Larkin. "And when they have a show, they have the ability to get the message out far more effectively than we do because of their marketing muscle and that fact that they're in twice as many home as we are - at least. So if Showtime has a good fight and HBO has a good fight, more of the boxing public will be aware of the HBO fight than the Showtime fight. And they will be hurt by counter-programming us, but not as badly as we will be."

You get the sense that uneasy truce that Showtime and HBO has fostered in making Lewis-Tyson will come to an end right around mid-night of June 8th and that this problem will continue.

ANNOUNCING TEAM

It was officially announced that Jim Lampley, Bobby Czyz, James Brown and Jim Gray will make up the broadcast crew for Lewis-Tyson. That's two HBO guys and two Showtime guys - right down the middle. With Larkin and HBO's Rick Bernstein co-producing.

All four of these guys are solid pros, but do you get the sense they could end up having the chemistry of this year's Milwaukee Bucks?

One source told me that early on there was a big struggle over how much would be spent on production for this event. With HBO wanting to spend at least twice the amount Showtime did - as they need to squeeze out every penny in their Tyson investment.

IRONY

Anyone else find it ironic that it was a Russell Peltz fighter that went directly against the edict handed down by ESPN2 banning fighters from having temporary banner tattoos on their body during 'Friday Night Fights'?

It's done two things from what I've seen: First, it's given boxers a common ground to unite. Secondly, it's forced the ESPN boxing brass to come clean about why they banned those ads. It was never about protecting the image or integrity of the sport or its boxers or to keep them from being 'debased'. This was about protecting the interest of their sponsors.

Which is fine, but if they would have come out and told the truth from the very beginning, they wouldn't have egg all over their faces.

But I applaud Ouma on the stand he took. Fighters get 'debased' only when their rights to make money are taken away from them.

ROY JONES JUNIOR JR.

I give Floyd Mayweather a lot of credit. He is a 'pound-for-pound' talent and his last four opponents have been very credible (Diego Corrales, Carlos Hernandez, Jesus Chavez and Jose Luis Castillo) but isn't this the same guy who said after his controversial win over Castillo that it was an easy fight and that he did it with one bum shoulder and yada, yada, yada...?

And 'the Pretty Boy' is always quick to tell us that he is by far the best fighter in the world. But yet, when it comes down to making the rematch for August 10th on pay-per-view versus Castillo in Los Angeles, he balks because he's worried about the judges? Huh? If that last fight was so 'easy' with one bad wing and he was that good, why would he worry about the judges?

Maybe, just maybe, he knows in his heart of hearts, that his last fight was indeed a tough one and that big, strong lightweights like Castillo will always give him problems and that he wants to be in the safe confines of Las Vegas or Grand Rapids. Whatever, but this is double-talk at its worst.

Kevin Iole of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and MaxBoxing reports that October 5th or 12th are now being discussed for an HBO date. Predictably, around that time Mayweather will probably complain (again) about how Bob Arum hasn't turned him into a pay-per-view fighter and has done a terrible job of promoting him.