We are a little over three months removed from Showtime Boxing closing its doors for good, and those involved had to look for new opportunities with other companies. That was also the case for former Head of Showtime Sports Stephen Espinoza, who returned to his producer roots for his latest “Gloves Off” project. He never really left being involved with a production, but for those not heavily invested in boxing, he was mostly known for being a high-level executive responsible for bringing some of the biggest events in Showtimes’ long history of the sport.
While watching the shoulder programming for then Keith Thurman vs Tim Tszyu (Thurman pulled out and has been replaced with Sebastian Fundora), I saw that one of the executive producers was Espinoza. Before watching the two-episode series Gloves Off, there were questions about whether it would resemble “All Access,” which was what Showtime used for their shoulder programming leading up to fights.
While FightsATW was on the scene for Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez vs Jaime Munguia’s press conference, Espinoza took a few minutes to give some exclusive insight on what he’s been working on. When doing shoulder programming for so many years and having fans conditioned to a particular product, would there be pressure to do something that looks and feels like the Emmy Award-winning All Access?
“A little of pressure, maybe not pressure,” said Espinoza. “You don’t want to get stuck in your ways and feel like there is only one way to do it. We did want to make it feel fresh and not reinvent the whole thing because I think a lot of it worked. But enough that people who liked the old show felt familiar while also seeing something fresh. It was a little bit of a different structure, and we will likely keep experimenting moving forward.”
The first episode of Gloves Off is divided into chapters, which wasn’t done before and is a nice wrinkle to the series. The texture of the footage felt advanced, and the approach to the intro was fresh and new. Something that did carry over was the narrator, Barry Pepper, who did the same for All Access. Espinoza did juggle with the idea of maybe having the episode without it, but in the end, it felt necessary, at least for now.
“It originally started that we weren’t going to use a narrator at all. If you don’t have the voice-over to transition you, it would be like, ‘Keith Thurman is over now; what do we have next.’ What we ran into, after seeing the first couple of versions and having four fighters on it, was that it became a little confusing. If you aren’t a hardcore boxing fan, then you’re like, ‘Wait, who’s fighting who?’ So, we ended up adding it (narrator) later, and after a while, we may see one without one (narrator) whatsoever. It’s worth experimenting.”
On Monday, news circulated that Thurman had pulled out of the fight due to a bicep injury. Shortly after, Fundora was inserted as Tszyu’s opponent, making the fight a unification bout with the WBC & WBO junior middleweight titles up for grabs. Just three days before, Prime Video premiered Gloves Off with Thurman on it, leaving the promotion in a predicament whether to get last-minute footage for the fight or leave it as is.
“It’s funny, you are spot on with this,” said Espinoza. “That’s been our conversation for the last 24 hours. How much can we get (new footage), and a big part of it is how long will it take for Prime (Video) to put it up? We could deliver it on Friday but that doesn’t mean it will go up on Friday. It may not go up until Tuesday or Wednesday. Do we want to sit there with no show? We are still in the midst of it, tracking down where the fighters are, etc. Long story short, we’re not sure and that’s what the rest of my afternoon (Tuesday) will be.”
All of this is new territory for everyone involved, as the March 30 show will be the inaugural event for Prime Video & Premier Boxing Championship’s partnership. Espinoza commented that the people at Prime Video have been excited about Gloves Off and the process up to this point. He did admit, though, that you don’t get total satisfaction until you see the process from start to finish, so he hopes that Prime Video will get that once they see the event live.
“They’ve been really excited. They (Prime Video) were really excited for Gloves Off. What I’m most excited about is for them to go to the event. You don’t really understand the sport until you go there and feel the excitement and adrenaline; then you get the payoff. That’s when you’ll get them completely on board and get them more excited once they have seen the product start to finish.”
As far as his future in boxing, Espinoza kept it close to his chest and said he loves being connected to the sport and will remain involved with it when it comes to projects like Gloves Off, documentaries, and other projects down the road. In other words, Espinoza is going to continue to contribute to the sport, even if it means pissing off a portion of social media, especially on X.
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