Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin staged the most relevant high-level boxing fight of 2017 earlier this month, and it turned out to be a fascinating fight. While it may have been overshadowed a bit between the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight three weeks before it, boxing fans knew that this was the “real fight” they were interested in seeing.
And according to a report from the LA Times’ Lance Pugmire, many fans paid the asking price for the bout – to the tune of 1.3 million pay-per-view buys.
That number, while nowhere near the reported 4.4 million domestic buys that Mayweather vs. McGregor did, is still a very good number and far and away the best of GGG’s career. In two prior PPV showings, he drew less than 200,000 buys for each.
Canelo has obviously been more successful on PPV, drawing 2.2 million for his 2013 bout with Mayweather, over 1 million for his May bout with Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr, and 900,000 for a 2015 bout with Miguel Cotto. He had struggled a bit PPV-wise outside of the JCC Jr. fight lately though, drawing 600,000 and 300,000 respectively in wins over Amir Khan and Liam Smith.
Alvarez and Golovkin went to a controversial draw in the September 16th fight, with one judge having it for Golovkin and one having it a draw, with Adelaide Byrd drawing major fire for a ridiculous 118-110 scorecard for Canelo.
The two men are talking rematch right now, with the possibility of a second fight in May. According to the article, both Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya and K2 Promotions’ Tom Loeffler didn’t comment on the reported buyrate.
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