By Dan Ambrose: WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman said recently that he doesn’t want to fight on pay-per-view, because he wants more boxing fans to see him fight. Thurman, 27, thinks that too many boxing events wind up on PPV nowadays, and he doesn’t like the idea of the fans having to pay to see him fight.
Thurman says he’s not looking to gauge the boxing fans by asking them to pay extra money to see him fight on top of the money that they’re already paying to get the premium channels each month like Showtime and/or HBO.
“I don’t want pay-per-view,” Thurman said last week after his 12 round unanimous decision win over Shawn Porter on June 25. “I don’t want you to pay for this entertainment. There’s too much world class athletic entertainment [available] for free. I want all of America to see [me fight].”
The real question is will Thurman still be saying the same thing about not wanting to have his fights televised on PPV if he builds up a huge fan base like Floyd Mayweather Jr., Manny Pacquiao and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Will Thurman be content with making around $2 million per fight rather than getting $20 million? I think it’s quite possible Thurman could eventually change his tune about not wanting to fight on PPV if he becomes a huge star in the future.
Right now, it doesn’t matter because Thurman isn’t a huge star, and he probably wouldn’t be able to bring in large pay-per-view numbers of his adviser Al Haymon and promoter Lou Dibella were to stick his fights on PPV on Showtime. It’s doubtful that Showtime would give the green light to having Thurman’s fights on PPV, because it would be a guarantee fail right now due to him not having enough fans that would be willing to pay between $60 and $70 to watch his fights.
“Who wants to have to pay $70 when you can get something for free? You’ve got to be a moron,” DiBella said to ESPN.com. “You know what I mean? Now, could [a rematch] be pay-per-view? Yeah. People would pay for it. It could be. But you know what? If I’m Showtime and CBS, I’m finding a way to get it on the network and, by the way, everything’s bigger on [network] TV. More people see it.”
I don’t think Dibella is right about fans being willing to pay to see a rematch between Thurman and Porter on PPV. For a rematch between those two fighters to be a PPV worthy event, Dibella would likely need to stack the card with other Al Haymon-managed fighters like Danny Garcia, Daniel Jacobs, Peter Quillin, and the Charlo brothers. Thurman vs. Porter 2 wouldn’t be a big enough fight on it’s own for it to be a PPV success unless they had lower expectations of what they felt was a success.
If they feel that between 10,000 and 50,000 PPV buys was a signal of success for the Thurman-Porter II rematch, then I think they would be successful, but I don’t see that fight bringing in any kind of real big numbers on PPV unless they reduced the price to make it more fan friendly. Asking fans to pay $70 to see Thurman fight Porter a second time would be a move that would be doomed for failure.
“I didn’t have HBO growing up,” Thurman said. “I didn’t have Showtime growing up, and if you have HBO and you have Showtime, and they make it pay-per-view, now you’ve got to come out of your pocket some more [money]. I’m not trying to gouge the American people and the American public. I want to get everybody on my side. I want everybody to have an opportunity to witness ‘One Time’ and I want boxing to come back to the forefront of network television.”
If Thurman becomes a big star in the future, then he definitely will be fighting on PPV. Let’s not get it twisted; Thurman isn’t going to tell Haymon and Dibella that they can’t put his fights on PPV if there’s an audience for him. However, the future is very uncertain for Thurman right now. He barely beat Porter, and there are guys like Errol Spence Jr. and Kell Brook that could end up unseating Thurman if Haymon chooses to match Thurman against either of those guys. If Haymon has Thurman permanently maneuvered around Spence and Brook, it will keep him from becoming a huge star, because the division is too limited right now in terms of talent for those fighters not to face each other. Thurman can’t become a star fighting the likes of Luis Collazo, Porter and Julio Diaz.