By Allan Fox: Top Rank Promotions has decided to place their upcoming big HBO pay-per-view fight between WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Sergio Martinez on the same night as the Golden Boy Promotions Showtime PPV fight between Saul Alvarez and Victor Ortiz on September 15th.
This obviously is going to hurt both fight cards because few boxing fans will have the money to purchase two PPV events on the same night. It would take fans with either huge interest in boxing or deep pockets in order to see both fights. It’s unclear why Top Rank president Bob Arum decided to put the Chavez Jr-Martinez on the same night at the Alvarez-Ortiz fight. It’s a move that is going to backfire because it won’t bring in the numbers that the fight would normally bring in if it were held on a different date.
At this point, I’d say the Alvarez-Ortiz fight will be the bigger fight. However, with the Chavez Jr. vs. Martinez fight being held on HBO, I think it could possibly bring in big numbers. Martinez’s adviser Sampson Lewkowicz thinks the Martinez-Chavez Jr. fight will bring in 1 million PPV buys. That sounds overly ambitious on his part. I think it might do 200,000 buys if there wasn’t anything competing with it, but with Alvarez-Ortiz taking place on the same night, I’m thinking that the Martinez vs. Chavez Jr. fight will be lucky if it brings in 100,000 buys. Chavez Jr. is a big star in the Mexican community, but that’s it. He’s not a star for the rest of the U.S population. Martinez isn’t a star at all in the U.S, so you can’t expect him to bring in big numbers on his own.
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