By Dan Ambrose: As expected, last Saturday’s Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka triple-header fight card on Showtime brought in poor numbers. It was a night of mismatches, and the poor numbers reflect dismal match-making that was done for this fight.
According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, the card averaged 612K viewers. The main event fight between Garcia and unranked lightweight Rod Salka averaged 808K viewers with a peak of 850. This was 17% lower than Garcia’s last fight against Mauricio Herrera, which brought in 972K. The poor match-making for Garcia led to a lower amount of viewers.
The co-feature fight between IBF light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson and #13 IBF Edgar Santana averaged 648K. This too was a mismatch with Peterson hitting Santana at will until the ringside doctor ordered the fight stopped in the 10th.
In the third televised fight on the card between Daniel Jacobs and Jarrod Fletcher, the fight averaged 558K. Jacobs battered the weaker and over-matched Fletcher for 4 rounds until stopping him in the 5th round after dropping him.
The low numbers for Showtime card tells you that Golden Boy Promotions and adviser Al Haymon can just throw together fight cards filed with horrible fights and expect boxing fans to want to watch them.
If Haymon was interested in marinating the fight between Garcia and Peterson by having them fight on the same card against other people then he should have found some better opposition than Santana and Salka. Out of all the light welterweights in the division there has got to have been some better fighters free then the guys that they found for this fight.
Showtime needs to be the watchdog in this situation to keep from letting low standard fights makes it on air, because if they purchase mediocre fight cards that are offered to them by the promoters are the advisers then all it will lead to is more fight cards filled with mismatches in the future.
Salka should have never been put in the situation for him to be fed to a light welterweight like Danny Garcia. It was a terrible fight on many levels. Garcia came out into the ring at a reported 155 pounds against a guy that looked no heavier than 142 at the most, and the fight was basically won on size alone by Garcia.
Dan Rafael had this to say about the Garcia-Salka fight: “It was total garbage. It was a waste of time. It wasn’t just the Peterson fight. He got $400,000 for what amounted to be an easy sparring session. Danny Garcia got $700,000 for that nonsense against Salka. I don’t blame the boxers. The entire card from top to bottom was total drek.They did 9 fights. The blue corner was 9-0. The blue corner won basically ever round of every fight. You’re talking nonsense. The boxers take home paydays. What we should have seen last Saturday is Lamont Peterson vs. Danny Garcia. Then after the fight, while they [Garcia and Peterson] didn’t say they wouldn’t take the fight, it didn’t seem like they were begging to take the fight. I just don’t think we’re going to wind up seeing it, which would be more of a shame. The only obstacle getting in the way of making the fight is Al Haymon by not giving the blessing to make it happen.”
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