Comments Thread For: Crawford-Indongo Fight Averaged 965,000 Viewers on ESPN

[rickJen]

I keep saying it...Crawfird is going to start a dispute with Top Rank soon...he hasnt got the Pacquiao fight and he wants to fight those other guys at PBC

He's starting to voice it publicly now

Nah. If you have seen his past videos, he showed no interest in the Pac fight. Of course, he'd say yes whenever he's bugged by all sorts of people asking him about the fight.

[Mr. 29K]

Amazing news. Good to see Dud flop with ratings.

[daggum]

where is he supposed to go.......if you havent noticed pbc is basically dead. they only have very small cards now with small purses. their figthers only fight when other promoters can come up with the cash like spence-brook, davis-uk bum etc... or on showtime but there is only so much of that small budget to go around. its best to wait around until the pbc folds completly, then a lot of fighters will be available and top rank will scoop them up since they have hbo and espn

[rickJen]

where is he supposed to go.......if you havent noticed pbc is basically dead. they only have very small cards now with small purses. their figthers only fight when other promoters can come up with the cash like spence-brook, davis-uk bum etc... or on showtime but there is only so much of that small budget to go around. its best to wait around until the pbc folds completly, then a lot of fighters will be available and top rank will scoop them up since they have hbo and espn

There's no other choice other than PBC/Showtime.
Home of overpaid fighters. They offer lots of holidays too.

[Raggamuffin]

A network change and a crowd of I think it was 12,000 in attendance...with 965k, that's solid numbers.

[IMDAZED]

These writers are quick to post PBC and Top Rank numbers but they have yet to mention any of GB fights on ESPN ratings. I guess it's not in their best interest to mention that GB did 231k on Friday.

That's a pretty good number for them so far.

[-Kev-]

Good #s. No one knows who Indongo is.

[boogbx]

If top rank draws in 700K's and 900K's respectively for 2 of their biggest names who happen to be on every P4P list what will the rest of the Top Rank cards draw? Outside of Pacquaio who's ratings now look like an outlier what can you expect going forward for Top Rank? I can't imagine ESPN going all out to promote any card more then they did these last 2. Next card features a huge drop off in star power with Valdez and Ramires on Sept 22 it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

This fight will actually do numbers because latinos make the ratings in boxing.

Plus I'm Wondering if they take into consideration espndeportes.

Boxing is huge in Latin America and if you want to see fights on time with no delay unlike regular espn, espndeportes is the ****.

[sicko]

Exactly. On a per-fight basis, on average, boxing is the most non-competitive, boring sport in the world right now. Are hardcore fans so biased towards Crawford or whatever that they actually thought this was a good fight? This was a terrible mismatch where one guy didn't even land a punch and got KO'd with the first solid body shot he took.

99% of the time the matchups are terrible, and the 1% of the time the matchups are good, 99% of those fights still suck because the referee is bought off and allows one fighter to hold and foul and take all the entertaining action out of the fight. Then to make matters worse, after the boring fights, the winner doesn't even win half the time.

Ask yourself, if the average score of an NBA game was 70 - 65, and 80% of the points scored were scored on free throws, would the NBA have good ratings? Of course not. Well guess what, in boxing, holding stops the action just as much as a foul does in basketball, so when the ref allows multiple holds per round without warnings or taking points, that's the exact same as if there was a foul every 30 seconds in an NBA game.

You can put boxing on any channel you like, but until the sport, the rules, the ref, the judges, the matchmaking, and even the commentating is revised, the sport will continue to decline. Just look how many commentators talk badly about Pacquiao, when he is one of the only boxers of the last two decades casual fans actually enjoy watching! But the boxing establishment in America is filled with hipsters like Max Kellerman, Bernard Hopkins, Andre Ward, and Paulie Malignaggi who would rather try to sell the casual fan Rigondeaux, Floyd Mayweather, and Andre Ward, than Manny Pacquiao.

Well guess what, most fans are not buying. Most fans want to see entertaining boxers elevated. If the NBA establishment designed their rules to benefit Dennis Rodman's play style, not Steph Curry's, it wouldn't be popular either, but that is exactly what the sport of boxing has done. Every effort is made by the boxing establishment to elevate the most boring, dirty, low-action boxers in the sport, while making it twice as hard for the entertaining boxers to succeed, get big fights, win big fights, and gain prominence.

The casual sports fan would have loved to jump on board the train of someone like GGG, for example, but since the sport of boxing could not get him a big fight until he was 34 years old, they really couldn't.

This stuff goes on constantly. Kovalev could have been another boxer to make boxing a mainstream sport, a Drago character with spectacular fights, but Stevenson and Beterbiev both ducked him, then boxing robbed him twice against Ward.

In fact, that is the perfect example. The boxing establishment had a choice the night of Kovalev-Ward 1, either to make Kovalev a star, or (try to) make Ward a star. Instead of choosing to elevate the exciting boxer with a mainstream, clean, exciting style, boxing chose to (try to) elevate the most dirty, boring boxer in the sport.

Well, then ****ty ratings is what you should expect. Boxing keeps making choices to keep itself a niché sport, always elevating the most niché, boring boxers, and so this is what happens.

Great Reply! I disagree with the problem being In The Ring! I think the problem is the lack of Personality from Fighters and even Promoters. Remove Mayweather from the PPV Records and most of those PPV Records was Don King Promoting Events! I do think Boxing Misses that "PERSONALITY" of a Don King, not talking about the crooked BS but the Personality, the Ability to sell a fight to any and everybody! Trinidad, Chavez Jr didn't speak English but Don King promoted them a Draw without speaking any English because King had that BIG PERSONALITY! AMERICA LOVES PERSONALITY! You don't have it you won't be a star HERE I don't give a *** how many KO's you score and how exciting your fights are in the ring

I will be honest, I think a lot of us Boxing fans are DELUSIONAL including myself! When you're on Forums like this you feel as if the Boxing Community is bigger than what it really is and I do think that is a MAJOR problem. Also Insulting and driving off Casual Fans who are new to the sport and making them feel less than (I'm Guilty Of This but only to Casuals who troll and post ****** stuff). I LOVE BOXING but the reason why I spend a lot of time on this forum because...well...nobody at my job, nobody in my family are Hardcore Boxing Fans just saying! Outside of Mayweather and Pacquiao, they have NO ***ING CLUE who these Boxers Are!

That Is A Problem! The Sport Of Boxing is so far attached from the Casual Sports fan it is not even funny! It is actually kinda scary going into the future. Just talking for the Landscape of Boxing here in American not talking about the UK which seems to be Thriving just find with Eddie Hearn and AJ

[Catrin]

Im just glad i can watch fights at suegros with out having to pay for HBO/showtime! Good free basic cable boxing! God bless amerika!
I mean just a couple of months ago this fight would've been on hbo!
Now they are on ESPN!