Goossen Tutor Promotions and Don King Productions held a media conference call on Tuesday, April 22, to discuss the upcoming 12-round World Boxing Council (WBC) World Heavyweight Championship fight and rematch between top-rated contenders Bermane “B. Ware” Stiverne (23-1-1, 20 KOs) and Chris “The Nightmare” Arreola (36-3, 31 KOs). Goossen Tutor Promotions President/Arreola promoter, Dan Goossen; ESPN senior director of programming and acquisitions, Brian Kweder; Stiverne’s manager, Camille Estephan; Stiverne and Arreola participated.

The fight, from the USC Galen Center in Los Angeles, will be exclusively televised live in the U.S. on Saturday, May 10, at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN Deportes’ Noche de Combates (Fight Night) and will be presented by Corona Extra. Read more on ESPN MediaZone.

This Saturday, April 26, ESPN and ESPN Deportes’ Noche de Combates will televise the first of two  Heavyweight Championship fights within two weeks when the networks air the WBA, IBF and WBO World Heavyweight Championship fight between titleholder Wladimir Klitschko (61-3, 52 KOs) and challenger Alex Leapai (30-4-3, 24 KOs) from the König-Pilsener-Arena in Oberhausen, Germany. Read more on ESPN MediaZone.

Below are quotes from ESPN’s Kweder from Tuesday’s media call. View the entire transcript here.   

Brian Kweder Opening Remarks: We at ESPN were thrilled to get the call from Dan (Goossen) regarding this Heavyweight world title fight. We’re happy to be airing it on ESPN.  We definitely appreciate that Dan and Don King saw the value of providing this fight to the wide masses of ESPN’s audience, which reaches 98 million homes, and also on ESPN Deportes and via broadband on WatchESPN.

ESPN has a long history of carrying world-class fights through our Friday Night Fights series, but we’re definitely stepping up our game a bit here with this fight. We also feel like we’re capturing the Heavyweight division like no one has in a long time by showing the Wladimir Klitschko vs. Alex Leapai fight on Saturday, April 26. That fight will be used to help drive folks to the May 10 fight as well between Chris Arreola and Bermane Stiverne.

The two fights together working in tandem really do a great job of painting the entire Heavyweight picture as it stands today in boxing, and here at ESPN we’re real excited about the Heavyweight division because there’s a lot of up-and-coming young fighters and some established fighters who are really making a name for themselves like Bermane Stiverne and Chris Arreola and several other high-profile American Heavyweights coming up through the pipeline.

The other reason we jumped on this fight was because of the historical significance of it. Obviously, Chris Arreola, if he were to win the fight, would become the first fighter of Mexican descent to win the Heavyweight championship, and Bermane Stiverne would be the first fighter of Haitian descent to win the Heavyweight championship, so we have that storyline as well.

I just wanted to express my gratitude to Dan Goossen and Don King for all the work they’re doing to make this a great fight, and we look forward to broadcasting it on Saturday, May 10, on ESPN, ESPN Deportes, and WatchESPN.

Q:  Do you feel HBO and Showtime have dropped the ball with the Heavyweight division?

Brian Kweder: No. I think there’s a lot to offer out in the boxing world and each network has their own priorities, and clearly ESPN stepped up because of the value of the Heavyweight division.  But I wouldn’t characterize it that way.

Q: Brian, quickly looking at the programming that you have leading up to this Heavyweight fight, you’re having two Heavyweight fights in a span of three weeks or so. Is this a one-time commercial programming feature, or will fight fans see more prizefight programming from ESPN?

Brian Kweder: I’m a big believer that you can’t do the same things year after year and expect success, and this was an opportunity that we saw. We took it, and while I can’t promise big fights like this in the future, it certainly opens the door for the possibility down the road.

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