By Vince D’Writer: For some unwarranted reason, somebody thought it was a good idea to have a third fight between undisputed Super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin. The marketing for this bout was centered around bad blood between the two fighters, as boxing promoter Eddie Hearn emphasized how much the boxers hated each other, and he predicted the trilogy fight would be the night of the year in boxing.
On Saturday, September 17 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, Canelo Alvarez won a bout that lacked action, and it was described by fans who attended the fight as an event that was hard to watch. Many fans left the arena shaking their heads due to the fact that the trilogy fight was a disappointment and it didn’t live up to the hype. The actual event was unsatisfying to the fans, and the newly released pay-per-view numbers will equate to a costly disappointment for DAZN.
According to the sources of veteran boxing reporter Dan Rafael, the Canelo vs Triple G trilogy fight generated between 550,000 and 575,000 pay-per-view buys in the United States. With a combined purse payout of 75 million for just Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin, DAZN needed approximately 600,000 buys just to break even. The numbers also revealed the fact that only 200,000 non-subscribers ordered the fight, which went for the rate of $64.99 for DAZN subscribers and $84.99 for non-subscribers.
During the promotion of the bout, Eddie Hearn predicted the trilogy fight would generate close to one million pay-per-view buys. The reported numbers fall well short of Hearn’s prediction, and the question is, how can a boxing star like Canelo generate such pedestrian numbers? For starters, the trilogy fight didn’t have any type of buzz due to the fact that boxing fans weren’t excited about this fight. It was simply a bout the fans didn’t ask for. Alvarez was coming off a loss, and Golovkin was showing signs of decline every time he stepped inside of the squared circle.
In the interest of fairness, it must also be noted that the trilogy fight numbers could have been affected by an elevated amount of illegal streaming and online piracy. The practice of streaming fights has developed into a major problem in the sport of boxing because it affects the projected numbers and, most importantly, it affects the profit margin. In the time that we are living in, piracy is going to exist, but the only way to counter this problem is to give the fans the matches they are willing to pay for.
Despite the subpar trilogy pay-per-view numbers, Canelo Alvarez is still the face of boxing, but the only way Canelo will be able to continue his reign as the biggest draw in the sport is to give the fans the fights they want to see. The trilogy fight between Canelo and Triple G felt like an event that DAZN was trying to force feed to the public. Right now, a matchup against David Benavidez is the fight that’s in high demand. On paper, it’s a 50/50 fight, and it’s also a fight that boxing fans would actually pay to see.
Dan Rafael is a credible boxing journalist, but Eddie Hearn disagrees with his pay-per-view numbers report, as Hearn responded to it on social media by posting the Pinocchio emoji. The reported numbers for Canelo-GGG 3 may be true, and it’s a good chance they are false, but if the numbers are accurate, that means the supposedly highly anticipated trilogy fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin caused the DAZN subscription-based platform to lose millions of dollars.
