There is no doubt that Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin is the fight fans have been wanting to see for a few years. They are two of the top boxers in the world, and a meeting between them should produce an incredible fight. And Oscar De La Hoya is banking on that.
De La Hoya, whose Golden Boy Promotions backs Canelo, says he thinks the September fight between the two top boxers will generate close to three million pay-per-view buys.
“With the heavyweight division being back with Anthony Joshua, you know with the Keith Thurman fight that was viewed by what, more that 5 million people on prime time TV, with Canelo-Chavez selling over a million homes — we’re expecting close to 3 million with Golovkin and Canelo in September,” De La Hoya said in an interview with Fight Hub TV. “These are the types of fights that bring boxing back, and that’s exactly my mission – is to bring boxing back, bring back that excitement that people used to live for when watching boxing.”
That would be an absolutely incredible number.
Consider that Floyd Mayweather, who has been the biggest draw in the sport, only surpassed three million buys once. That was in 2015 when he fought Manny Pacquiao and the fight generated a record 4.6 million buys. Mayweather only surpassed the two million mark two times besides the Pacquiao fight. Once was when he beat Alvarez, and the other was when he fought Oscar in 2007 — a fight that catapulted Mayweather to a new level of fame.
There is little doubt that the interest level and number of buys multiply when you put two exciting opponents in the ring, but expecting close to three million buys is extremely ambitious, if not unrealistic. A good sign though is that Canelo’s recent fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. did over a million buys. We’d say that two million buys is a much more realistic number to expect.
