By Miguel Rivera
Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya is expecting some big numbers for May 7th, when Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez will defend his WBC middleweight championship against Amir Khan at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The event caught everyone off-guard on Tuesday when the camps of both fighters made their separate announcements.
De La Hoya is expecting the fight to exceed the big numbers that were generated by Canelo's last November pay-per-view bout with Puerto Rican superstar, Miguel Cotto. That fight generated 900,000 buys.
Canelo has been able to draw at least 300-350,000 buys on his own, against non-pay-per-view opponents like Erislandy Lara and Alfredo Angulo. His pay-per-view career began, at least in the headline position, was when he faced Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013. Their event packed in 2.2 million buys on pay-per-view, which only sits behind De La Hoya-Mayweather and Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Prior to headlining with Mayweather, Canelo was showcased on pay-per-view several times in calculated bouts on Mayweather's undercards. Those fights helped Canelo's following grow and gained him more name recognition with casual fans. The event with Cotto did more than most industry analysts had predicted and even surprised some of the parties involved with the show.
Khan's biggest pay-per-view showcase was a co-feature slot in 2014, when he won a twelve round decision over Luis Collazo on the Mayweather-Maidana undercard. That event was viewed as the interim-start for a fall bout between Mayweather and Khan. Mayweather returned in the fall, but selected Maidana for a rematch.
This will be Khan's biggest pay-per-view stage. He holds a big following in the UK. Many of those fans are going to cross over to support Khan - who will come face to face with a very rabid Mexican audience. The promoters are expecting a race between their fanbases to snap up the tickets when they officially go on sale.
"We do not know how much [this event will bring in] but it is a mega-event. This is a big fight, one which no one expected and because we took the whole world by surprise - this fight is creating news stories all over the world and it will be larger that Cotto-Canelo. I expect that it's going to do [a million] and that indicates that Canelo is a superstar," De La Hoya told ESPN Deportes.
