Last weekend, pound-for-pound superstar and ‘face of boxing’, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, put together a solid display as he comfortably outpointed the undisputed super-welterweight champion, Jermell Charlo, to make a third successful defence of his four super-middleweight titles.
Alvarez settled into the fight early, uncharacteristically banking the early rounds to set the tone of the bout, meaning that the powerless Charlo required a knockout to win throughout the second-half of the contest.
After a string of underwhelming performances, Canelo appeared to be near his best following recovery from his hand injury that has supposedly hampered him on recent outings. He was unable to get the knockout against a reluctant Charlo, extending his stoppage drought to four bouts, the joint-longest of his career.
In his own words, the Mexican’s aim ahead of the showdown was to re-establish himself as the ‘king of boxing’.
Now, veteran boxing journalist Dan Rafael has revealed the number of pay-per-view buys for the all-undisputed spectacle fall between between 650,000 and 700,000 in the US.
By comparison, the long-awaited Errol Spence Jr-Terence Crawford card reportedly did around 700,000 buys.
Meanwhile, Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia clocked in a mammoth 1.2 million buys, generating the sixth-highest pay-per-view revenue of all-time and the second highest for a fight that didn’t feature Floyd Mayweather.
Like Spence-Crawford, it can be argued that Davis was matched with another blockbuster dance partner in Garcia, meaning that the debate for the ‘face of boxing’ is more than likely to continue over the next twelve months.