By Keith Idec

The last thing Bob Arum wanted to do was use the pay-per-view platform to televise his April 22 card from Carson, California.

He would’ve preferred that his promotional company, Top Rank Inc., broadcast fights featuring WBO world featherweight champion Oscar Valdez (21-0, 19 KOs) and WBO world super middleweight champion Gilberto Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs) on HBO. Once HBO Sports didn’t express an interest in televising a card featuring Valdez and Ramirez against opponents different from the foes they’ll face April 22, Arum decided to go the pay-per-view route.

The four-fight telecast, which will cost $44.95 in SD and $54.95 in HD, will be headlined by Mexico’s Valdez. He’ll defend his title defense against Colombia’s Marriaga (25-1, 21 KOs), the WBO’s No. 1 contender at 126 pounds.

“I think it’s a terrific card,” Arum told BoxingScene.com on Tuesday following a press conference to promote his card in Manhattan Beach, California. “It’ll do decent pay-per-view business and it’ll sell out at the gate [at StubHub Center]. Would I prefer for these guys to fight on free television? Yeah. But, you know, it is what it is. The alternative is for them to sit on their asses while I wait for somebody making a handout.”

The handout to which Arum referred is a license fee from HBO for the rights to televise Valdez and Ramirez fights. That license fee theoretically could come from Showtime as well, but Top Rank doesn’t do business with Showtime on a regular basis.

“I don’t wanna talk about HBO,” Arum said. “I’m saying that it is not my first choice to ever do pay-per-view except for a big, big match. But I have to do it from time to time because I have no alternative.”

In addition to the Valdez-Marriaga match, the April 22 telecast will include Mexico’s Ramirez in his first defense of the WBO 168-pound title against Ukraine’s Max Bursak (33-4-1, 15 KOs), a bout between WBO super bantamweight champion Jessie Magdaleno (24-0, 17 KOs), of Las Vegas, and Brazil’s Adeilson Dos Santos (18-2, 14 KOs), and the pro debut of 2016 Olympic silver medalist Shakur Stevenson, of Newark, New Jersey.

Arum’s April 22 card will air at the same time as a Showtime telecast headlined by the Shawn Porter-Andre Berto welterweight fight from Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.