Not bad. Proof that Boxing can make it big on national television with the proper matchups and solid promotion/advertising.
It's about god damn time boxing stopped relying on "names" (who all happen to be getting old now) to sell fights. They should concentrate on making solid competitive matches and we will watch them. Taylor and Pavlik aren't superstars like Oscar and they did great numbers on HBO. With great matches being made, new stars will be born.
True, but once these "stars" on born they are automatically on PPV. Look at the first Corrales-Castillo fight. One of the best fights ever. All hard core boxing fans knew it would be great, but even they didn't think it would be like it was. Rematch? PPV.
Yeah, there are too many PPV's BUT, I really wouldn't mind paying if they were all quality matches. Usually they are Name vs Can with crap undercard. I guess I'm really just getting tired of the old man circuit and how every fight has to be a PPV.
From Dan Rafael's blog... On television, the fight did outstanding numbers, too. According to my sources at HBO, the telecast generated a 3.9 rating for the live airing Saturday night. The Sunday morning replay did a 1.3, which is tremendous for an encore presentation. The fight performed better than any fight HBO televised in 2008, the exceptions being Oscar De La Hoya-Steve Forbes in May, De La Hoya's first non-HBO PPV fight since 2001, and the Joe Calzaghe-Bernard Hopkins bout in April. Yup, and it was was a bust (somewhere in the 200s if I remember correctly.)
Everybody is. The point i was trying to make is that once guys start to get good and are in an exciting fight the immediate thought process of the networks is "Wow people like that guy" or "That was an entertaining fight" "This time let's charge for it!"
