HBO World Championship Boxing

HBO World Championship Boxing (in later years stylized in its title card as HBO Boxing – World Championship) is an American sports television series on premium television network HBO. It premiered on January 22, 1973 with a fight that saw George Foreman defeat Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica.

HBO's pay-per-view distribution arm, TVKO was launched 1991 with Evander Holyfield vs. George Foreman, becoming HBO PPV in 2001.

On September 27, 2018, HBO announced they would be dropping boxing from the network following its last televised match on October 27, though two airings on November 24 and December 8 were its last editions. Various issues in the boxing business, including the influx of streaming options (such as DAZN and ESPN+) and issues with promoters, along with declining ratings and loss of interest in the sport among HBO's subscribers, made the continued carriage of the sport untenable. HBO's long-term move to upscale dramatic programming, an ownership transfer of parent WarnerMedia to AT&T, then Warner Bros. Discovery, where the company's sport division became focused on TNT as TNT Sports, and re-focus around the upcoming streaming service HBO Max also played a role in the decision, with an HBO executive commenting that "HBO is not a sports network". The network cancelled its last sports-related program, Real Sports, at the end of 2022.