By Chris Williams: It looks like last Saturday night’s fight between WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) and welterweight Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) failed to bring in the monstrous numbers on HBO pay-per-view that Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya had been predicting. I could have predicted that the Canelo vs. Khan fight would do poor numbers because fans don’t want to see champions handpicking opponents from two divisions below their weight class. Canelo-Khan was just another version of Danny Garcia vs. little Rod Salka.
De La Hoya had been talking about the Canelo-Khan fight bringing in 2 million buys in a fight that would cement the Canelo’s status as the No.1 fighter in boxing. Unfortunately, reality has spoiled De La Hoya’s dreams, as Lance pugmire is reporting the Canelo vs. Khan fight did less than 600,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO.
Believe me, that ain’t good. I think is going to rethink his belief of Canelo being the replacement for Mayweather as the sport’s top PPV attraction, because if this is the replacement for Mayweather, then the sport needs seriously needs help. Granted, Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao would have been asking for trouble if they had signed for a pay-per-view fight against a no name like Khan unless they fought him during the golden age of PPV fights between 2009 and 2012.
Those were the years where Mayweather and Pacquiao got be guaranteed to hit 1 million PPV guys no matter who they fought. Regrettably, the PPV well has gone dry since, with the exception of the Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight.
“Looks like canelo @amirkingkhan did just under 600k PPV buys,” said Lance Pugmire.
What this means for Canelo is he’s going to need to take the more dangerous opponents to fight if he wants to bring in a lot of PPV buys. Canelo can’t count on taking on welterweights and expecting to bring in 1 million PPV buys. However, that’s not to stop Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions from choosing Miguel Cotto to fight next September rather than Gennady Golovkin.
Canelo-Cotto brought in a haul of 900,000 PPV buys on HBO. The thing with promoters is they don’t show much imagination. If they get one fight that brings in a good number of PPV buys, they keep showing that same fight down the throats of the boxing public until they want to puke.
If the less than 600 PPV buys for the Canelo-Khan fight turns out to be true, then Golden Boy is going to need to take more risks with Canelo in the future unless they’re good with him bringing in those kinds of PPV buys. They can’t blame those poor numbers on the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. The Khan vs. Canelo fight was a mismatch on paper the moment the fight was signed.
If Golden Boy wanted a high number of PPV buys for Canelo’s fight last Saturday, they should have put him in with an opponent that had a fighting chance like Andre Ward, Daniel Jacobs, Chris Eubank Jr., Gennady Golovkin or Jermall Charlo.
Those guys were obviously not going to be put in with Canelo though because they clearly would have been too risky for him. If a fighter like Khan was able to win the first four rounds against Canelo, then would guys like Jacobs, Eubank Jr., Jermall Charlo, Ward or Golovkin do?