Before the annihilation began, Golovkin-Lemieux looked like a match-up worthy of the PPV price tag. With two of the Middleweight division’s hardest-hitters, and the solid Gonzalez-Viloria pairing on the undercard, this thing looked to be a hot ticket – which a sold out Madison Square Garden also confirmed.
But just because 20,568 people filled the place, it doesn’t mean the event appealed to the majority of armchair fans in living rooms. According to multiple sources, Golovkin-Lemieux brought in somewhere between 125,000-150,000 buys.
At first glance those numbers don’t seem too terrible, but considering Tom Loeffler (Golovkin’s promoter) said 200,000 would have been financially sufficient, you have to wonder what went wrong. It’s fathomable that Golovkin, and more likely Lemieux, are nowhere near as marketable as, say, Canelo Alvarez and Miguel Cotto. But even so, these numbers are very surprising.
In comparison, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather’s rumble brought in 300,000 buys back in 2007. But why was that? Was De La Hoya just a bigger household name? Was it all of Mayweather’s trash talk prior to their showdown?
Who knows? For one reason or another, Golovkin-Lemieux failed to capture the serious interest of its HBO audience. But HBO, Golden Boy, K2 Promotions and co won’t be scrapping the idea of another Golovkin PPV event just yet. There’s a good chance the Kazakhstan boxer-puncher will be taking on the winner of Cotto-Canelo in 2016.
Now that sounds like a fight that could easily beat 300,000 buys. Well, it’s a theory, anyway.
Why do you think Golovkin-Lemieux failed to bring in decent PPV figures on Saturday night?
