Planning to debut his Monday night pay-per-view series on March 31st at the Mountaineer Race Track in Chester, West Virginia, Lou DiBella has seen his card sabotaged from outside forces and from within in the last week. Not to be deterred, the resourceful New Yorker has taken his show west.

"The show is moving to Little Rock, Arkansas," DiBella announced to MaxBoxing on Friday afternoon. "When Angel Manfredy - Victoriano Sosa fell apart basically, that was the key to the deal for Mountaineer and we knew that going in. So it's not Mountaineer's fault, but when Sosa fell out, Manfredy was told by a number of different sources that he was going to get a chance for Gatti, so he didn't want to fight the equivalent-level of fight and basically we had to move the show."

Sosa was scratched from the card when he accepted a fight against WBC lightweight champion Floyd Mayweather this past week, an opening that came up when Raul Balbi was upset in a supposed tune-up bout last weekend in Argentina. And with the negotiations for a third Gatti-Ward fight hitting a snag, Manfredy could be getting a call from Main Events for a June rematch with Gatti. So now, while the main event features a bout between Fernando Montiel and Mark Johnson, it's the homecoming of Jermain Taylor - who faces his stiffest test in Brian Barbosa - that will drive the live gate.

"We spent the last couple of days working our asses off and we're moving it to Little Rock - The Statehouse Convention Center. It's set up for 3,600 people and it'll be a real big event for Little Rock," explained DiBella. "We'll have two weeks to really launch the local promotion. I think behind Jermain's star power in Little Rock, we'll be fine.

"We went to Jermain and said, 'Jermain, we may have to bring this show down, we lost our site,' and his attitude was, 'I think Little Rock would support me enough that it could work.'"

Taylor, in his first bout back in Little Rock in the summer of 2001, fought before a raucous crowd of over 7,000 in the finale of the now defunct 'KO Nation' series on HBO.

"I expect to sell this show out. Honestly, you have two weeks to do it and this is the best boxing show to hit Arkansas since, I don't know when," said DiBella. "To have a quality world title fight - Montiel and Johnson - and a hometown hero fighting the toughest fight of his career, it's one of the biggest shows to hit Little Rock. And on two weeks notice I want to pack the place and sell the place out and I want to do it the right way and on this time frame, this is the perfect venue and the right size. I think on Monday night we can fill it up with Jermain Taylor fans and boxing fans."

With the Arkansas Razorbacks' football and basketball teams in the offseason, the timing seems ideal. But it's a minor miracle that this card is taking place at all. By the middle of this past week the show was on shaky ground. It started with Sosa taking the place of Balbi on April 19th against Mayweather on HBO. (It's interesting to note that HBO is cherry picking an opponent from a pay-per-view show that their own branch, HBO Pay-Per-View, was distributing.)

"They needed an opponent for Mayweather," DiBella conceded. "No question that Sosa was the best guy available to them who would take the fight. I wish that it wouldn't have come out that Manfredy was in discussions (for Gatti) because that really did kill that fight. But also look, HBO's done a lot to help promote this show and I'm hoping and expecting them to help me going forward. I understand why it happened. It did not help my show. But I still think it's a good show. There's been only one opponent change on it, which is Sosa, who's out for Manfredy but otherwise the show's intact. It's going to be in Little Rock, it's going to be an electric environment and I think it's a quality show."

What also threatened the show was that Montiel, the current WBO jr. bantamweight titlist, was going through an ongoing contractual dispute with manager Ricardo Maldonado. The ensuing debate brought about other managers trying to sign Montiel - some just to sabotage DiBella's show. Eventually, a deal was struck to Montiel's satisfaction and he will face 'Too Sharp' Johnson in his toughest professional fight to date.

So the show must - and will - go on. It'll be interesting to see how this format works out. A similar concept done by TVKO in the early 90's was a disaster and quickly scrapped. But this series has a much different revenue model with much smaller overhead costs going in.

"First of all," pointed out DiBella, "there was a lot more associated with the old TVKO dates. There were a lot of people making automatic profits and the shows were prohibitively expensive just right off the bat. But if my shows- and I'm not expecting to do monthly shows, but if four or five of my shows perform the same way the old TVKO shows did, I would be thrilled."

And DiBella feels that shows such as these help fill a big void in the industry.

"There's still a lack of broadcast television and look, I applaud Main Events for what they're doing with NBC but when the network's not paying any money, that doesn't really help the economic outlook of the sport," stated DiBella. "And in order to keep fighters busy, if you're really in the business and you're investing in the future of your fighters and developing them, and you have future champions that you have to keep active, this type of show or something like it becomes a necessity.

"It's no accident that with all the dates Bob Arum has - and Arum has more television dates than any other promoter - he still needs the pay-per-view level shows to keep small world champions fighting and to have them paid. People have to understand, it's not like we're pulling shows that would be elsewhere and putting them on pay-per-view. No one's taking anything away from free TV and putting it on pay-per-view. If I didn't put this card together, these fights wouldn't happen."

And they wouldn't happen for several reasons.

"Jermain Taylor," pointed out DiBella, as an example, "needed another step-up fight. He couldn't wait for HBO and honestly he's had zero support from ESPN. And even if we got an ESPN date - which I want to say out loud, for some reason he's not been able to get and I'd like an explanation - but even on ESPN a Barbosa fight would be difficult to make economically. So where else would that fight happen?"

The suggested retail price of this card is $24.95 and in addition to Montiel-Johnson, Taylor-Barbosa, and Manfredy, it also features a heavyweight bout between Derek Bryant and Eric Kirkland. The broadcast team of Barry Tompkins and Al Bernstein has also been reunited and Chuck Zito of 'Oz' fame, a former Golden Gloves boxer, has been hired to be the sideline reporter.

"I'm doing this to keep fighters active," DiBella states. " I'd love to make a couple of bucks and I'd like to build it into something that could make a few bucks, but it's really being done to create more opportunities for fighters, to create more places for them to fight. I have a lot of fighters now under contract. I am not able to get these slots necessary to keep them all active and I'm not willing to sit them on the shelf. I didn't make contracts with people so that I can breach them."