Bradley-Rios averages only 910K viewers on HBO

By Boxing News - 11/10/2015 - Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbONIaLELVk

By Chris Williams: In a sign that boxing fans weren’t interested in seeing Top Rank’s in house fight last Saturday night between two of their stable fighters WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) and Brandon Rios (33-3-1, 24 KOs), the fight averaged only 910,000 viewers on HBO Championship Boxing, according to ESPN.

The Bradley-Rios fight had a peak of 1.03 million viewers. The fight cost HBO $3 million, according to Dan Rafael. Bradley’s last mismatch against another over-matched Top Rank fighter, Jessie Vargas, averaged 1.12 million viewers on HBO.

Just why Bradley vs. Rios didn’t draw as well as the Bradley vs. Rios fight is unclear, because Rios is arguably a better known fighter than Vargas. After all, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum previously matched Rios up against his No.1 star money fighter Manny Pacquiao in 2013 in a horribly one-sided fight where Pacquiao made Rios look like a punching bag for 12 rounds on HBO PPV.

It might be that the casual boxing fans remembered how one-sided that fight was, and decided that a bout between Rios and Bradley, both previous victims of Pacquiao, would be a one-sided fight as well. Things obviously weren’t helped that Bradley was a 5:1 favorite over Rios going into the fight.

For Bradley, this was his first fight with trainer Teddy Atlas at his side to guide him through the 12 round match-up against Rios. But overall, Bradley looked pretty much the same as he’s been in the past. When you’ve seen Bradley fight once you’ve seen him fight a 100 times. He doesn’t really change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PobCdyyeHA

We heard a lot afterwards how Atlas changed Bradley’s fighting style, but that’s a bunch of baloney. This was pure Bradley in this fight against one of Arum’s slow and out of shape Top Rank fighters in Rios, and it made for horrible viewing.

The Bradley vs. Rios fight did even worse than Bradley’s 12 round draw against Diego Chaves last year in December. That fight averaged 966,000 viewers on HBO. So what does that tell you? It tells me that boxing fans might not have liked the idea if Arum trotting Rios out again for yet another fight that he would lose.

Things weren’t helped obviously by Rios’ controversial 9th round disqualification win over Diego Chaves last year on HBO, when referee Vic Drakulitch stepped in to disqualify Chaves in the 9th round for throwing an elbow that I didn’t see him throw.

If not for the disqualification of Chaves, Rios would have lost that fight too. He was behind on the scorecards and on his way to losing the 10 round scheduled fight. Rios also had a controversial 12 round decision win over Richard Abril in 2012 in a fight that many boxing fans thought that Abril should have won.

During the Rios vs. Bradley fight last Saturday night was a college football game between Alabama and LSU, which brought in monster ratings of 11.1 million viewers. However, I doubt that was the reason why boxing fans chose not to bother watching the Bradley-Rios fight. I think it was more of a case of it being a really bad fight and the boxing fans not being interested in seeing it.

If Top Rank wants to bring in good rating, then they need to stop matching Bradley against guys like Rios, Diego Chaves and Jessie Vargas, and start matching him against guys like Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Errol Spence, Adrien Broner, Kell Brook, Amir Khan, or some of the junior middleweights like Jermall Charlo or Dementrius Andrade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkA3rZs-m0k

The co-feature bout between Vasyl Lomachenko and Romulo Koasicha averaged only 585,000 viewers on HBO with a peak of 657,000. I wasn’t surprised that fight brought in so few viewers because it was a mismatch between Lomachenko and an obscure contender. Top Rank was asking for trouble when tyey made this fight as the co-feature bout.

Instead of having Lomachenko fight little known guys like Koascha, they need to match Lomachenko against guys like Nonito Donaire or Guillermo Rigondeaux. Boxing fans would love to see those fights, but they definitely don’t get excited at seeing mismatches like the one we saw last Saturday night.

Lomachenko even admitted carrying Koascha to the 10th round before knocking him out. If Top Rank wants to turn Lomachenko into a star, then they need to match him up against better fighters than this, because he’s not facing good enough fighters to increase his popularity. Lomachenko needs to fight with a little more energy as well, because he fought like he was sparring rather than fighting.



Comments are closed.