https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=49NPY3ogWe4

By Allan Fox: IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler isn’t expecting huge pay-per-view numbers for Golovkin’s fight on HBO PPV against IBF middleweight title holder David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) in their fight on October 17th at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Loeffler quite rightfully expects the PPV numbers to be “conservative” for the fight card, which makes a lot of sense because neither of these fighters Golovkin and Lemieux are American, nor have they ever fought on a pay-per-view card before.

Additionally, the co-feature fight between WBC flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez vs. Brian Viloria aren’t huge household names among the casual boxing fans in the United States.

A good pay-per-view number for the Golovkin-Lemieux and Gonzalez-Viloria card would be 300,000 buys. I’m sure that Loeffler, Golovkin and HBO would be overjoyed if the fight card brought in those conservative PPV numbers, because it would put Golovkin right up there with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Miguel Cotto in their pay-per-view fight cards where they’ve been the A-side fighters and not the B-side to Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

“I think we are pretty conservative on our end, with ticket sales you can see everyone is very excited about the event,” Loeffler said. ”None of the fighters have been on HBO pay-per-view before so this is really us trying to make this event work. We will be happy with the success on pay-per-view and I think it opens a lot of doors for all the fighters featured on the show,” Loeffler added.

To make the Golovkin-Lemieux fight bigger on HBO pay-per-view, it would take more advertising. I’m not seeing a lot of commercials for the Golovkin vs. Lemieux fight on television right now. I have HBO, and I’m not seeing the advertisements. When Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao fight, you see advertisements constantly on different channels. Not seeing it with Golovkin vs. Lemieux.

Golovkin, 33, has brought in good ratings on HBO in his recent fights against guys like Willie Monroe Jr., and Martin Murray, but that was on regular HBO. It’s a different situation when you ask boxing fans to pay to see a fighter that they’ve been seeing for free up until now. When you ask fans to suddenly start paying $45 to see a fighter they’ve been accustomed to seeing for free, you get mixed reactions from the boxing fans.

If Golovkin was facing a well-known fighter like Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao, it would be much easier for fans to want to pay their hard-earned money to see him. But Lemieux is not a well-known fighter to American casual boxing fans, and they might not want to pay to see him in this fight. The fans know that HBO will be replaying the fight a week later on regular non-PPV HBO, and that’s what a lot of the fans will be waiting for.

The fans that are well versed in boxing see the Golovkin-Lemieux fight as a mismatch, and that’s likely going to hurt PPV sales for the fight. Lemieux is a good fighter, but he’s seen largely as a no-hoper due to his previous losses to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine from 2011.