By Dan Ambrose: Eddie Hearn says he has concerns about placing the 168-lb undisputed championship fight between Canelo Alvarez and Caleb Plant on pay-per-view in September due to the high concentration of PPV events that are taking place around that time.
Boxing promoters are suddenly placing lesser fights involving mismatches on pay-per-view one after another in a shotgun approach, hoping they’ll sell.
It’s fair to say the promoters and fighters have picked the wrong time to get greedy to start selling their events on PPV.
With the pandemic still going strong impacting employment in the U.S, it seems like a wrong-headed idea for the promoters to flooding the market with pay-per-view events right now.
Additionally, most of the events that are being peddled by the promoters are lackluster mismatches.
Fans saw one of those mismatches last weekend with Floyd Mayweather Jr fighting YouTuber Logan Paul. That dreadful event was just the tip of the iceberg for upcoming shows on PPV in 2021.
Some of the upcoming PPV events:
- Gervonta Davis vs. Mario Barrios
- Teofimo Lopez vs. Geore Kambosos Jr
- Tyson Fury vs. Devontay Wilder
- Manny Pacquiao vs. Errol Spence Jr
If the Matchroom Boxing promoter Hearn gets his way, he’d like to place the Canelo vs. Plant fight on DAZN rather than take the chance that it bombs on Fox Sports PPV.
That’s where IBF super middleweight champion Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) and his management at Premier Boxing Champions will be looking to place the fight with Canelo.
Hearn worried about PPV saturation
“What I’m very concerned about at the moment is the run of pay-per-view fights that are up and coming,” said Hearn to DAZN Boxing Show on the Canelo vs. Plant fight.
Plant believes the fight with Canelo will bring in many pay-per-view buys, but he might be wrong. While Canelo is popular, he needs a popular opponent to bring in the buys.
For example, Canelo’s two fights with Gennady Golovkin brought in around 1 million buys on PPV, but both guys were stars. Plant is nowhere near the level of where Golovkin was when he fought Canelo on HBO PPV in 2017 and 2018.
If Canelo-Plant can only bring in 300,000 to 500,000 PPV buys, that might not be enough to support the huge purses that the two fighters will be looking to get. Plant says he wants in the neighborhood of $10 million.
That amount, along with Canelo’s huge purse, might not be supported if their fight on FOX Sports PPV fails to bring in huge numbers due in part to the saturation of the market.
“I believe that the way pay-per-view is going, the numbers are going to start getting affected by the saturation of pay-per-view in the marketplace,” said Hearn. I’m very concerned about pay-per-view numbers in general.
“Where Canelo Alvarez is comfortable is taking the fight, we will do it.
Hearn: Canelo would never fight a YouTuber
“I think he has too much respect for the sport of boxing to do something like that,” said Hearn about Canelo choosing to fight a YouTuber one of these days.
“Floyd [Mayweather] has never been about that. I like Floyd’s honesty, to say, ‘I’m just taking your money, give me the money, and I’ll fight.”
Hearn didn’t like what he saw of 44-year-old Floyd Mayweather’s eight-round exhibition match against YouTuber Logan Paul last Sunday night.
Mayweather looked old and shot, nothing like the fighter that he once many eons ago.
Hearn believes that Canelo would never stoop to that level to hustle fights against YouTubers to make a buck off the back of the gullible fans.