David Benavidez’s WBC light heavyweight title eliminator against Oleksandr Gvozdyk will share a card with WBA ‘regular’ lightweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis’ title defense against Frank Martin on June 22nd in Houston, Texas.
Fans better be prepared to dig deep for this event, possibly seeing $100 PPV prices due to the one-two punch of having Tank and Benavidez on the same card.
Tank, 29, is a popular fighter, but his pay-per-view events have largely done mediocre numbers, except his fight against Ryan Garcia last April, which brought in 1.2 million on Showtime PPV for $84.99.
A lot of the credit for the success of that event was due to the influencer/boxer Ryan’s 11 million Instagram followers, not due to Tank Davis. Before fighting Ryan Garcia, Tank Davis’ past PPV events had averaged 232,000 buys, which isn’t overwhelmingly great.
The Matchups: Solid But Not Spectacular
- Tank Davis vs. Frank Martin: This is a decent title defense, but Martin is expected to be overmatched against Tank. In the 29-year-old’s last fight, he looked bang average, coming close to losing to fringe lightweight contender Artem Harutyunyan.
- David Benavidez vs. Oleksandr Gvozdyk: This would have been an excellent fight five to six years ago when Gvozdyk was younger and still firing on all cylinders. His age [he’ll be turning 37 on April 17th] and his four-year layoff after retiring in 2019 take away much of the interest in this match-up.
That explains why Benavidez vs. Gvozdyk has been added to Tank’s June 22nd event on Amazon Prime PPV. For Tank to be headlining without a big back-up co-main, he would need to fight someone fans want to see him fight, like Devin Haney, Shakur Stevenson, Vasily Lomachenko, or Teofimo Lopez.
Benavidez revealed to FreshAndFit podcast that he’ll be taking on Gvozdyk (20-1, 16 KOs) on the Tank vs. Martin card on June 22nd. The fight event will be shown on PBC’s new platform with Amazon Prime PPV.
Considering that’s not a fight that fans are excited about, Premier Boxing Champions boss Al Haymon was smart to include Benavidez vs. Gvozdyk to increase PPV sales.
The PPV Price: The Make or Break Factor
The cost could be a problem for this event. Fans have criticized Tank Davis’ past pay-per-view events, balking at the high prices and choosing not to purchase them.
If the promoters want to ensure the June 22nd event’s success, they need to price it right, avoiding charging fans $80+ for the event.
Besides the high prices of Tank’s events, these two factors have caused fans to save their money and not purchase them:
1. Lackluster match-ups: Non-worthy PPV fights sold to the public
2. Putting fights behind PPV paywall: Tank’s promoters at Mayweather Promotions rushed him into PPV way too early in his career, preventing him from being seen by fans on regular non-PPV events. Was it greed on their part or miscalculation?