By Allan Fox: Last Saturday’s fight between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder (36-0, 35 KOs) and Artur Szpilka (20-2, 15 KOs) brought in disappointing numbers on Showtime Championship Boxing. According to Dan Rafael, the Wilder vs. Szpilka fight averaged just 500,000 viewers on Showtime with a peak of 623,000 viewers for their fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Wilder had previously averaged a whopping 2.179 million viewers for his one-sided victory over Johann Duhaupas four months ago in September 2015 on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC. That’s free television, so you would expect the Wilder-Duhaupas fight to bring in better numbers than a fight on a premium channel like Showtime that boxing fans have to pay extra to see.
However, the Wilder vs. Szpilka should have brought in better numbers than it did if the fans cared about the fight. Apparently, the fans weren’t too excited about this fight, and rightly so because it was considered a mismatch from the word go. Besides it being a mismatch, the fight wasn’t announced weeks before, as Wilder’s management had been trying to get Vyacheslav Glazkov to take the fight.
Glazkov chose instead to go the IBF round in a fight against Charles Martin. It turned out to be a huge blunder on Glazkov’s part, because he suffered an injury that caused the fight to be halted in the 3rd round and Martin declared the winner. Wilder vs. Bermane Stiverne averaged 1.24 million viewers with a peak of 1.34 million viewers on Showtime.
The fans obviously saw the Wilder-Stiverne fight more interesting than Wilder-Szpilka. Wilder’s fight against Eric Molina last year on Showtime didn’t bring in big numbers, however. The fight brought in an average of 678,000 viewers. Those numbers were still better than the 500K the Wilder vs. Szpilka fight pulled in.
As for the co-feature bout on the Wilder-Szpilka fight between Glazkov and Martin, it averaged 437,000 viewers with a peak of 500,000. What was surprising being the fans were interested in the Glazkov vs. Martin fight about as much as the Wilder vs. Szpilka fight.
Last year I became A champion, this year I will become THE champion….. #Undisputed #Undefeated #Undeniable pic.twitter.com/W0omsd1kRV
— Deontay Wilder (@BronzeBomber) January 22, 2016
Wilder’s management is going to need to be a little more selective when they choose opponents for his voluntary defenses. Wilder’s ratings didn’t suffer in his first two title defenses against Molina and Duhaupas. But by the time that Wilder got to Szpilka, the fans showed their disinterest by choosing not to watch.
The good news is Wilder will be forced to fight a good opponent in his next fight against his #1 WBC mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin. The bad news is the casual boxing fans might not be anymore interested in seeing Wilder fight Povetkin than they were Szpilka. Povetkin is only known among the hardcore fans in the U.S. In other words, it’s going to take some promoting and marketing of the Wilder-Povetkin fight to attract attention. Showtime can’t just throw it on television and hope that the casual fans will be watching that night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK8xtRazo-E
Wilder will be lucky if he beats Povetkin, because this is by far his best opponent of his career. Povetkin is a polished former WBA heavyweight champion and Olympic gold medalist. He has very few flaws in his game, and he’s quite capable of taking advantage of Wilder’s many vulnerabilities.
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