Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya made mention before last Saturday’s mega-fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) and Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) that the fight would bring in between 1.5 million and 2.5 million buys on HBO pay-per-view.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be bringing in anywhere close to that number of buys. According to early estimates, the Cotto vs. Canelo fight will do at least 900,000 PPV buys, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. 900,000 is a respectable number, but nowhere near the huge amount of buys that De La Hoya was predicting for the fight.
We could see a rematch between Cotto and Canelo, because they had rematch language in their contracts for a second fight. It’s hard to see De La Hoya not pushing for a second fight between them, even if the PPV buys were a million miles away from what he projected. A rematch saves Canelo from having to fight Gennady Golovkin and potentially getting knocked out by him.
“No Cotto-Canelo PPV figures yet. Will be few days but based on early satellite numbers, source involved told me it’s a lock to do at least 900k,” Rafael said on his Twitter.
If these numbers turn out to be true, then it’s going to be tough on De La Hoya and Cotto’s promoters at Roc Nation Sports. They felt the fight was going to bring in tremendous numbers. 900K isn’t huge numbers.
If two so-called superstars can’t even bring in 1 million PPV buys, then it tells you that they overestimated the public interest in the fight. It’s possible that the fight could have brought in my PPV buys if they loaded up the undercard with fighters that the casual boxing fans have heard of instead of loading it up with fighters that only the most knowledgeable hardcore fans are familiar with.
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You have to remember that Cotto and Canelo have both been beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the not so distant past. Cotto hadn’t fought anyone good since his loss to Mayweather. Canelo was involved with a controversial decision to Erislandy Lara last year. A lot of fans thought Canelo lost that fight. Instead of Canelo giving Lara a rematch to clear up the controversy, De La Hoya told him to get in the back of the long line for another fight against him. That was a terrible performance by Canelo and yet he and De La Hoya were satisfied with it.
Canelo beat Cotto by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of Scores: 119-109, 118-110, and 117-111.
Cotto landed 129 of 629 punches for a connect percentage of 21 percent, according to CompuBox. Canelo was a little better in landing 155 of 484 punches for a connect percentage of 32%. Canelo missed a lot of shots, and it’s hard to believe he landed 32% punches.
“Now it’s my era,” Canelo said after the fight.
De La Hoya said at the post-fight press conference that Canelo has taken over as boxing’s No.1 fighter now that Mayweather has retired. If this is true, then it’s sort of sad because Canelo has decided to throw his weight around by fighting in catch-weights at 155lbs rather than fighting traditional weights at 154 or 160. Canelo has made his own weight division, and he’s shown the ability to rehydrate huge amounts of weight that reminds some of how Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. used to put on tons of weight after he rehydrated for his middleweight division.
The Cotto-Canelo fight was closer than the wide scores that were handed down by the three judges. The scoring was actually quite bad, because there’s no way that Canelo won the fight by the margins the three judges had it. I scored the fight 7 rounds to 5. Cotto believed that he won the fight, and that’s why he stormed out of the ring afterwards. You can’t blame him for being upset because the scoring was just atrocious.
Article courtesy of Boxing News 24