By Jeff Aranow: Andre Ward’s rematch with Sergey Kovalev did poor numbers on HBO PPV for their June 17 rematch at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports News, the Ward vs. Kovalev 2 rematch did 125,000 buys on HBO pay-per-view.
This is a drop off from the 160,000 buys the first Ward-Kovalev pulled in last year on November 19 on HBO PPV. Ward won that fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113.
Ward was given a guaranteed purse of $6.5 million for the rematch with Kovalev. For his part, Kovalev’s purse is tied into the PPV revenue. But with Ward getting a big $6.5M purse for the fight, there might not be much left over for Kovalev after Ward’s money is paid out to him.
The PPV buys and the gate might not bring in enough for Kovalev to get a decent payday out of the fight. With the way the fight ended with Kovalev appearing to get hit with a low blow, it’s a real bad deal for him in number of ways. Hopefully for Kovalev’s sake he doesn’t end up with next nothing for the fight, because it would be bad news for him if he walks away with nothing for the fight.
The second Ward vs. Kovalev fight was seen by 752,000 boxing fans on replay on June 24 on HBO, which suggests that the fans didn’t see it as a good enough fight for them to watch to pay to see it on PPV. The low PPV numbers suggests that it was a bad idea for a rematch to be staged due to the controversial victory Ward received in the first fight last November.
The rematch was far worse than the first fight when it comes to controversy due the quick and sudden stoppage by referee Tony Weeks in the 8th round following what appeared to be a low blow from Ward. Some boxing fans thought Ward got away with 4 low blows in the last 2 rounds. Whatever the case, it was very weird stoppage by the referee Tony Weeks.
Just because Ward and Kovalev are popular to a certain extent doesn’t mean that they should have had put their fights on PPV. If middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin hasn’t been able to break through as a PPV attraction despite having knocked out every opponent since 2008, then it was a crazy idea to put the defensive-minded Ward in a fight against Kovalev on PPV twice in a row. That just had money grab written all over it. Putting Ward and Kovalev on PPV once was more than enough. The boxing public had already seen how the two of them would fight each other, so it looks like they opted to save their money rather than paying to see a rematch that might involve a lot more grappling on the inside.
To Ward’s credit, he didn’t do a lot of wrestling in the rematch, but he did appear to end the fight with a low blow in the minds of a lot of boxing fans. The ending to the Kovalev vs. Ward 2 fight was totally unsatisfying. It’s good thing the two fighters aren’t facing each other a third time, because I doubt that the fight would bring in more than 100,000 buys.
The promotion of the Ward vs. Kovalev 2 fight seemed to be lacking. The two fighters should have had more public appearances together. There needed to be more one on one meetings between the two fighters. The two fighters pretty much only met up with each other in the press conferences and at the final weigh-in. Kovalev walked out of the final press conference after saying handful of words. I’m not sure that Kovalev understood or not that he needed to help promote the event. It was a self-defeating move on Kovalev’s part to walk out like that.
In hindsight, it would have been a better idea for the Ward vs. Kovalev 2 rematch to have been shown on regular HBO World Championship Boxing instead of on HBO PPV. The first fight was so unsatisfactory due to the controversial decision and all the wrestling that was involved by the two fighters. It was a crazy idea to put a second fight between the two fighters on PPV after their dull first fight. The first fight was fun for the first 2 rounds was fun, but from the 3rd round on, it became a tactical fight with a lot of holding.
Ward and Kovalev really need to be fighting on regular HBO at this point in their careers, because neither of them is popular enough to be on PPV. Ward likely needs someone that bring in the fans like Gennady Golovkin for him to get a lot of buys. I hope Ward isn’t holding his breath waiting for Golovkin to fight him on HBO PPV, because I don’t see it happening. The way or Ward to increase his popularity is to fight on non-HBO PPV so that he can be seen by a wide audience.
You have to remember that Ward was inactive with his boxing career from 2013 to 2015. Since Ward’s returned to the ring, he’s fought 5 times in beating Paul Smith, Sullivan Barrera, Alexander Brand and Sergey Kovalev. None of the fights have been particularly exciting to watch. Some of them have been boring. Ward hasn’t fought like a PPV fighter, and he’s not had enough fights in the last 7 years for him to be seen as a PPV attraction.
Ward could end up fighting cruiserweight Tony Bellew next. There are news reports from the UK that Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn is interested in possibly putting a fight together between Bellew and Ward. That fight would likely be on PPV in the UK. If they had Ward-Bellew on HBO PPV in the U.S, I can imagine PPV sales well below 100,000 buys. Bellew is not a big in the U.S with the casual boxing fans or the hardcore fans. I don’t think that fight sells at all in the States. It might sell some buys in the UK, but even over there I’m not sure if it would.