By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Both Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin have predicted knockouts when they fight September 16.
Neither fighter can guarantee, of course, that their fight will end earlier than the scheduled 12 rounds.
Oscar De La Hoya, however, has guaranteed that their middleweight championship showdown will start earlier than fans have become accustomed. De La Hoya – whose company, Golden Boy Promotions, represents Alvarez – announced that the Alvarez-Golovkin main event will start no later than 11 p.m. ET.
That means the highly anticipated Alvarez-Golovkin clash will begin no later than 8 p.m. PT at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“The main event will go off no later than 11 p.m. on the East Coast,” De La Hoya said during a press event Tuesday night in The Theater at Madison Square Garden. “So for all the writers, for all the fans, you don’t have to wait up too late, at 12 midnight, 1 o’clock in the morning. You will be able to watch this fight at 11 p.m. Eastern Time.”
Pay-per-view main events often begin around midnight ET, sometimes later, which causes consumers in the Eastern time zone to complain about paying $65-$75 to watch fights in HD that don’t end until nearly 1 a.m. ET. Pay-per-view main events often start that late because promoters typically will wait for buyers on the West Coast to make their purchases
De La Hoya also announced that to keep his 11 p.m. promise to boxing fans in the Eastern time zone, the four-fight HBO Pay-Per-View telecast will begin at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. Pay-per-view shows usually begin at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, though there have been several shows that have begun at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT in recent years.
HBO Pay-Per-View’s most recent main event, the Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev light heavyweight championship rematch, began around 11:15 p.m. ET/8:15 p.m. PT on Saturday night.
That fight, which Ward won by eighth-round technical knockout, began earlier than most pay-per-view main events because each of the three televised undercard bouts ended in knockouts.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.