De La Hoya expects Cotto-Canelo to bring 1.5 million PPV buys

By Boxing News - 11/11/2015 - Comments

delahoya9045By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is predicting huge pay-per-view numbers for the November 21st fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) vs. Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) on HBO pay-per-view from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

De La Hoya thinks the fight will bring in no less than 1.5 million pay-per-view buys for the fight, which sells for $59.99 on HBO.

Those are very, very ambitious numbers that De La Hoya is predicting for the fight, especially given that Cotto and Canelo have never proven to bring in more than 300,000 PPV buys when they were the A-side fighter for their PPV fights.

The only time Canelo and Cotto have brought in big PPV numbers is when they were fighting Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the past.

“Sales for this event are excellent so far, better than expected and I feel 99% confident about this fight. In my opinion, this is the most anticipated fight of the year and we are expecting great numbers, 1.5 million or more,” De La Hoya said via Fighthype.com.

If De La Hoya wants to bring in 1.5 million PPV buys on HBO for Canelo, then he needs to match him up against Gennady Golovkin, because that’s the only fight I can see that will bring in those kinds of numbers other than if he were to fight Mayweather. Boxing fans don’t seem to be interested in seeing Canelo fight on PPV unless there’s a good chance of him losing.

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I don’t agree with those numbers at all. De La Hoya obviously wishes the Cotto vs. Canelo fight would bring in 1.5 million buys on HBO, but I don’t think the fight will do even half those numbers. Everything is working against the fight doing more than 500,000 PPV buys, and even that number is under the best circumstances.

Cotto and Canelo are going about attracting interest in the fight the wrong way. Neither of them is trash talking. If you watched the Cotto-Canelo 24/7 on HBO, they were both saying nothing but positive things about each other. They weren’t showing a lot of personality, and neither fighter was doing much smiling.

Watching the Cotto-Canelo 24/7 episodes was like watching paint dry. It was just flat out boring to me. Neither of these guys have the personality to make up for the lack of drama the fight has. We’re talking about a 35-year-old in Cotto, who hasn’t fought a quality opponent in three years since his loss to Austin Trout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuSTvDjB38o

For his part, Canelo has arguably lost two out of his last 4 fights in defeats to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Erislandy Lara, and wins over slow fighters from the past in James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo. T

hose two guys are no longer relevant fighters, and Canelo proved nothing by fighting them other than he did a good job of cherry picking a couple of shot fighters. A lot of boxing fans thought Canelo lost to Erislandy Lara.

If Canelo really wanted to show that he was willing to fight the best, then he would have fought Jermall Charlo, Jermell Charlo and Demetrius Andrade. Those guys are a lot better than Angulo and Kirkland.

If De La Hoya is good with the Cotto-Canelo fight doing 500,000 PPV buys, then this should make him happy. But if De La Hoya is really serious about the Cotto vs. Canelo fight doing 1.5M PPV buys, then I think he’s going to be extremely upset with the real life numbers that come in for the fight.

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Another thing that will likely hurt the Cotto vs. Canelo fight in terms of PPV buys is the lack of a quality undercard. There aren’t interesting fights on the undercard as far as I’m concerned. They initially had Andre Ward on the undercard, but he pulled out of the card due to an injury.

The fights left on the card are smaller guys from the bantamweight and featherweight divisions. Those guys aren’t household names with the casual boxing fans.

It’s too bad De La Hoya doesn’t have any other really popular fighters in his stable besides Canelo that he can add to the undercard, because the undercard needs some serious help in a major way. There’s not enough quality on the undercard to bring in the huge PPV numbers that De La Hoya is dreaming of.



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