If you were looking to find the new transcendent star after last weekend’s Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, well it may have only taken one week to realize who the future of the sport of boxing might fall on. Having already been a ratings draw on HBO and Showtime, and putting 40,000 in the seats in San Antonio, Canelo Alvarez star power continued to shine last Saturday.
In front of over 31,000 people in Houston Texas, Canelo Alvarez demolished James Kirkland in 3 rounds with a knockout of the year contender putting Kirkland to bed.
Not only was he a live draw, he is a television draw as well.
After spending the last three years on Showtime, Canelo’s return to HBO was an instant success rating wise.
The Canelo-Kirkland bout drew a monstrous 2.146 million viewers, peaking at just under 2.3 million viewers. It became the most watched boxing event since Hopkins-Tarver in 2006 which garnered a 2.4 million rating.
Canelo was the only live fight that night as HBO paired his performance with the Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch that took place the week before. Humberto Soto was supposed to take on Frankie Gomez but was scrapped as Gomez could not make the initial 141 lb. limit and then couldn’t make the renegotiated 145 lb. limit, coming in over 147.
What was impressive about the numbers is that the Mayweather-Pacquiao replay did 1.18 million viewers, meaning that along with those viewers staying, another 1 million plus stayed to watch the Canelo fight which only went three rounds.
The notion of boxing being dead has been overblown many times but with Canelo’s rating this week and Klitschko-Jennings doing over 1.6 million on cable television, it seems like the cable side is well. Now couple on fights on regular network television numbers and the sport is doing just fine.
