Stephen A. Smith (L) and Teddy Atlas on ESPN Dec. 9. Credit: ESPN
By Sam Neumann on

Teddy Atlas seemingly said goodbye to ESPN on Saturday night.

The longtime boxing analyst posted on social media after working UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden, suggesting his nearly three-decade run with the network had come to an end.

Awful Announcing has learned that Atlas’ contract ends at the end of the year, and he’s not planned for any other appearances at this time.

ESPN’s boxing presence has shrunk considerably over the past year. The network ended its exclusive deal with Top Rank in 2025 and the UFC left for Paramount+ in a $7.7 billion deal that moved all UFC events to the streaming service starting in 2026. Without the UFC’s 43 annual events and Top Rank’s stable of fighters, ESPN’s combat sports slate has essentially been gutted.

The network had been the home of Friday Night Fights from 1998 to 2015, then brought boxing back in 2017 with a multi-year Top Rank deal. That partnership expired, and ESPN chose not to renew. The UFC’s departure to Paramount+ eliminated the other major combat sports programming that Atlas had been calling.

Atlas had been with ESPN since 1998, serving as the network’s primary boxing analyst for 27 years before his departure. He won the Sam Taub Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism in 2001 and became synonymous with ESPN’s boxing coverage alongside Joe Tessitore.

His tenure wasn’t without controversy. In 2017, ESPN pulled Atlas from live fight coverage after he criticized the judging in the Manny Pacquiao-Jeff Horn fight and had on-air clashes with Stephen A. Smith and other analysts. The network kept him under contract but moved him to studio work and feature segments rather than ringside commentary.

Atlas eventually returned to calling fights, but ESPN’s commitment to boxing continued to fade. The network’s focus shifted toward the NBA, NFL, and college football while combat sports became an afterthought. With the UFC gone and Top Rank no longer in the mix, there simply wasn’t much left for Atlas to call.

At 69, Atlas exits ESPN after calling some of the biggest fights of the past three decades. Where he lands next remains unclear, but with boxing scattered across DAZN, Netflix, and various streaming platforms, opportunities exist. Whether any of those platforms can match what ESPN once offered for boxing coverage is another question.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann