Eddie Hearn has said that the reported TV audience for Deontay Wilder’s comeback fight against Robert Helenius is a ‘financial disaster’ if true.
Wilder returned to the ring this month after taking his second loss to Tyson Fury last year. He disposed of his Finnish opponent inside the first round, reminding us all of the power he’s famous for.
Following the event, veteran boxing journalist, Dan Rafael, reported that it generated just 75,000 pay-per-view buys at a price of $74.99.
Reacting to that number in an interview with Boxing Social, the Matchroom promoter says that, whilst it’s bad, it may be indicative of the times as well as the match up.
“It’s obviously, financially, a disaster, but it wasn’t a massive fight.
I think that we’re approaching a time around the world that people are spending their money more wisely.
And obviously the pay-per-view price point in America is expensive. I think that when there’s a fight that most predicted would be one-sided – I didn’t think it would be as one-sided as that but I think that the generally perception was – obviously you’ve seen that with the number of buys, and it was a disaster.”
PBC or FOX have not come out to comment on Rafael’s report, and Hearn took issue with a similar story not long ago surrounding the PPV buys for his event, Canelo – Golovkin 3.
Still, should the numbers be correct, it does paint a bleak picture for what most would consider America’s biggest heavyweight star.
Hearn will be keeping a keen eye on things like this, too, given his interest in pitting his man, Anthony Joshua, against Wilder. It’s a fight that he and others have described as potentially ‘the biggest in boxing’, but with home viewing figures like this for the American, it seems like Joshua might be doing some of the heavy lifting.