Golovkin-Rubio brings in 1.3 million viewers on HBO, a huge hit!

By Boxing News - 10/21/2014 - Comments

golovkin444(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Dan Ambrose: If Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez needed the motivation to fight WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) then all they need do is look at the huge ratings his fight against Marco Antonio Rubio (59-7-1, 51 KOs) generated last Saturday night on HBO Championship Boxing from the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

The Golovkin-Rubio fight averaged 1,304 million viewers, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN, which makes it the 2nd most viewed fight of the year. That’s not bad for a fighter who can’t get Canelo and Cotto to fight him.

The co-feature bout between WBA Super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-3, 21 KOs) and WBA champion Nicholas Walters (25-0, 21 KOs) averaged 1.1 million viewers with a peak of 1.166 million viewers.

This was a one-two punch of a fight card with both the main event and the co-feature bringing in huge ratings. It’s rare to see both the headliner and the chief supporting fight to bring in big ratings, because it’s usually just the main event with a huge drop off for the co-feature.

”Per Nielsen: GGG-Rubio a big hit. Averaged 1.304M viewers for the bout, 2nd-most viewers for a fight this year in the US. Donaire-Walters averaged 1.1M viewers, peaked at 1.166M viewers. #boxing. Golovkin-Rubio peaked at 1,323,000 million viewers.”

The big ratings numbers for Golovkin suggest that he’s very close to becoming a pay-per-view fighter in his own right. Canelo and Cotto bring in similar ratings, yet they’re both now pay-per-view fighters.

With Golovkin bringing in numbers that are on part with those two stars, it tells you that Golovkin is already up there with them in terms of popularity. That means that even if Cotto and Canelo choose to never fight Golovkin, he’s still going to be a highly successful pay-per-view fighter even without them.

It’s not likely that Rubio helped Golovkin’s numbers much for this fight card, because Rubio doesn’t have a huge fan base, and he came into the fight without having ever beaten a high quality fighter before.



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