By Eric Baldwin: WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman wants his fight against WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia to be viewed by a huge audience of 6 million viewers this Saturday night in their fight on Showtime Championship Boxing on CBS. It’s certainly possible that the Thurman-Garcia fight could be seen by that many boxing fans, as Thurman’s fight against Shawn Porter was seen by a peak of 3.94 million viewers on CBS last July, and that was an opponent that wasn’t a world champion and arguably isn’t as popular as Garcia.
(Photo credit: Amanda Westcott/SHOWTIME)
According to RingTV.com, Garcia is hoping for his fight with Thurman to be seen by 10 million viewers, but he’d settle for 6 million. The amount of casual boxing fans that tune in to see the fight on Saturday night will depend on how well the fight has been marketed, as well what other programs that will be on at the same time.
Having the Garcia vs. Thurman fight on free television on CBS increases the chances of the fight being seen by a lot of boxing viewers.
The start time for the Thurman-Garcia fight is at 9:00 pm. ET/6:00 p.m. PT on CBS this Saturday night.
“I’d love to see 5.5 million to six million viewers,” Thurman said to RingTV.com . “That would be a true honor and a blessing. It’s a blessing to bring these caliber of fights back to network television and the way of the era of Sugar Ray Leonard. I said this earlier today — ‘Yes there’s money to make in pay-per-view because you’re paying for a view.’ But when it comes to the sport of boxing, instead of $20 million generated (from PPV), I’d like to see 20 million viewers back into the sport of boxing. Being champion, if I could ask for anything more, it’s that boxing gets those kinds of numbers once again.”
The criticism about pay-per-view is that it keeps fighters from building a huge fan base, because they’re not seen enough by the casual boxing fans on free on regular free television or on regular premium channels. For example, Saul Canelo Alvarez fights almost every time on pay-per-view nowadays, and he’s only 26, and he still hasn’t been seen by a lot of the casual fans. If Thurman can fight for a long period of time on free television the way that fighters in the past did, he could become a big PPV attraction without him having a large build in audience the way that Canelo Alvarez does.
