By Cliff Rold
The numbers aren’t official yet but estimates as of Wednesday had the Gennady Golovkin-David Lemieux middleweight unification bout doing between 125-150,000 pay-per-view buys. Prior to the fight, the Golovkin team tried to temper expectations by saying something in the ballpark of 200,000 would be a home run for the promotion.
It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback (can a basketball analogy work it’s way in here? Time will tell…) so let’s go ahead and do it.
Could more have been done to build the promotion outside the ticket buying audience in New York? It was certainly a gate success. Priced right for consumers, Golovkin-Lemieux packed the house and the house was loud. They were loud for the main event, loud for Roman Gonzalez-Brian Viloria, and really loud for Donald Trump.
It was a fine night at the fights.
If one wasn’t going to be there live, seeing it live doesn’t appear to have been a high priority for US households. Had the fight been on HBO, it likely does a solid number with US viewers in the millions.
On pay-per-view it was reasonably priced but price point isn’t always enough. In order for someone to buy something, they have to want it. A desirable show can be deemed too pricy but for something that wasn’t desired, being cheaper doesn’t necessarily make it more appealing. Did HBO’s decision not to air Lemieux’s IBF title winning effort against Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam come back to bite a little here?
Boxing fans still finding FoxSports1 hadn’t really seen Lemieux live since December 2014 in his HBO broadcast win over Gabe Rosado. Had more people seen the entertaining N’Jikam scrap, maybe that elevates the unification showdown.
Or maybe not.
Despite all the talk of a possible punching war breaking out, there was one thing the fight couldn’t shake:
No one thought Lemieux had a prayer.
There was lots of talk about ways Lemieux might make it competitive, about how anything can happen if a big shot lands, but no one really thought he could win. Many predicted it to be a four or five round fight.
Established pay-per-view stars have shown they can do numbers from 300-500,000 against foes with no hope. Oscar De La Hoya did it with Yori Boy Campas. Floyd Mayweather just did something in that range, though no official number was announced, with Andre Berto.
Golovkin is popular with fight fans and he sells tickets in major markets. He clearly hasn’t hit the point where Golovkin versus anyone is going to get enough people to open their wallets and make him a juggernaut. To be fair, the big names couldn’t do that until after doing monster shows along the way with stiffer tests.
Golovkin has needed and still needs a desirable dance partner to make the next step in the market place. His team has known that. It’s why showdowns with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Carl Froch were pursued. Those fights would have left a bigger economic footprint. The question here is this: did last Saturday’s numbers hurt or help Golovkin’s cause?
In terms of merit, there is no debate. Golovkin is perceived by most as the class of the division. He’s earned the right, in the ring, to face the biggest names his division has to offer. In terms of boxing as sport, Golovkin can’t hurt his chances. He’s already been waiting.
The business part of the answer may come in the numbers for next month’s Miguel Cotto-Saul Alvarez fight. If that contest does anywhere close to a million buys, the combatants will have shown they can do a blockbuster without sharing a bill with Mayweather or Pacquiao. If it does more in the neighborhood of Cotto’s fights with Antonio Margarito, that will land it between 400-600,000. Either way, should that fight be remotely competitive, along with entertaining, a rematch would be the most lucrative fight in the division.
And both Cotto and Alvarez would be able to point to the Golovkin-Lemieux numbers as all the justification in the world for keeping the Kazakh knockout artist waiting. They might get stripped of the WBC belt before any return contest.
That would just be that much more money to split between them.
If it’s not competitive, if the fight is one-sided, much may come down to who wins. Miguel Cotto appears less likely to mix with Golovkin, at least without a healthy catchweight stipulation. If it’s Alvarez a one-sided winner, Golovkin might be left as the biggest money option available in the division. Golovkin’s numbers against Lemieux wouldn’t matter as much as the projections of what an Alvarez-Golovkin fight could do.
Remember, before he fought De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad had no serious pay-per-view chops. It didn’t matter because the fight had the right combination of competition and star power. It was the perfect intersection of hardcore fight fan passions and casual interest. Golovkin-Alvarez might not be De La Hoya-Trinidad big but it could capture some of the same cross section.
If the Alvarez-Cotto winner doesn’t materialize in 2016 for Golovkin, putting all the eggs in the middleweight basket could end up being an air ball (there it is). We may all look back a year from now with a single name standing out as the one that got away.
For all his detractors, still-reigning Super Middleweight champion Andre Ward is the sort of elite quality opponent Golovkin hasn’t had. They’ve done similar enough television audience numbers on HBO to suggest they would draw interest. On pay-per-view, they wouldn’t do the sort of numbers Golovkin might with an Alvarez. Golovkin-Ward would be bigger business than Lemieux.
Ward’s outside the ring issues kept that fight from being realistic for most of the last two years. However, when he returned at a 172 lb. catchweight with Paul Smith this summer, there were plenty of signs and statements that Ward could still be tempted back down to 168 lbs. for a Golovkin fight.
That showdown would have been, on paper, the classiest match between a reigning middle and super middleweight titlist since Roy Jones-James Toney.
Golovkin’s team didn’t seem that interested (outside of stuff about a catchweight at 164), declaring their desire to unify at 160. Ward now appears building for a showdown in 2016 with unified Light Heavyweight titlist Sergey Kovalev. We can probably close the book for good on Golovkin-Ward at that point, if we aren’t already there. 2016 could end with a then 34-year old Golovkin watching Ward-Kovalev and kept at the altar by a Cotto-Alvarez rivalry.
At middleweight, it would be fair to grumble that he was being unjustly denied his defining moment. Beyond 160, we’d have to ask if maybe he’d denied himself.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com