By Sean Jones: Promoter Oscar De La Hoya is labeling Saturday’s pay-per-view monster between Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis as “the fight to save boxing,” one that could exceed one million PPV buys on Showtime.
What’s working against the Tank-Ryan fight hitting the one million mark is the high price tag of $84.99, a firewall that stops hundreds of thousands of fence-sitters from pulling the trigger and buying the fight on Showtime & DAZN PPV. Greed is not good.
“This is the fight to save boxing,” said De La Hoya to Mortal Kombat, talking about the Tank Davis vs. Ryan Garcia fight. “Ryan Garcia has that following, the female, which is very rare in boxing.
“The last time it happened was with me, for instance. So with Gervonta Davis, he’s a working man’s fighter. He’s a tough guy, a no-nonsense, and basically, they don’t like each other. There’s a grudge match there.
“I think with both styles, both being young and undefeated, it’s going to create one of those big mega-fights.”
Brian Campbell: “I love how you say, ‘The fight to save boxing’ or to grow it. If This fight adds to the health of boxing, would you say this fight goes against the tired cliche stereotypes that people say about, ‘I used to love that sport but,’ you know?”
De La Hoya: “Yeah, right. Boxing is never going to go anywhere. They keep saying, ‘boxing is dying,’ but if you build it, they will come.”
As always, De La Hoya is optimistic about the PPV numbers the Davis vs. Garcia fight will bring in, but if it hits the one million buy mark, that would be the first time since 2018 that a boxing match has brought in that many buys.
That was the rematch between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin. Both of their fights on HBO sold over one million PPV buys. However, when Canelo made the mistake of waiting too long before fighting Golovkin in the trilogy in 2022, their fight hauled in a disappointing 550,000 PPV buys.
That was another example of a fighter [Canelo] shooting himself in the foot by failing to strike while the iron was still hot to face Golovkin a third time while the fan interest was still high.
Was it fear or false pride that caused Canelo to wait so long before fighting Golovkin in the trilogy? It could be a combination of both because many boxing fans believed the Mexican star deserved to lose the first two fights. GGG was a better fighter than Canelo.
Will Saturday’s Tank Davis vs. Ryan Garcia hit one million buys on PPV? It could come down to the hype the fight pulls in this week.
At yesterday’s grand arrivals in Las Vegas, Tank Davis had very little to say to the media when interviewed, which left it to Ryan to build the hype for the fight.
It would have been excellent for the 28-year-old Tank to talk a little trash instead of leaving it up to Ryan and Gervonta’s former promoter Leonard Ellerbe to do all the heavy lifting.
