Premier Boxing Champions: Still Lacking For Focus
By Cliff Rold
The news was not good.
Last Saturday, fight fans got an interesting upset on national television when Joe Smith stopped light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara in the first round. Too bad national television didn’t tune in.
One could look at this from a glass half full perspective. The Smith-Fonfara .8 rating still equated to over one million viewers, something few boxing cards have these days on any network. As a percentage of the television viewing audience that has access to a network like NBC, the glass isn’t just half empty.
It’s broken.
Is the PBC experiment broken as well?
The whole point of buying television time was to eventually create a product that would draw advertisers and be self-sustaining. When Keith-Thurman-Robert Guerrero drew a peak of four million viewers in the inaugural PBC card, there was reason to be optimistic. The PBC cards in prime time continue to draw more eyes than your average card. The Andre Berto-Victor Ortiz rematch on Fox averaged in the neighborhood of 1.5 million viewers.
The highest rated HBO card of the year, headlined by Gennady Golovkin, averaged 1.3 and change. As a percentage of available audience, that’s a better rating. It’s not more eyes.
That doesn’t erase the obvious: PBC used its access to present a product to an audience that has not grown. For years, fans have mused about what free TV could mean for boxing. If one is a network programmer, the evidence suggests it’s not a must investment right now.
The PBC may ultimately be hurting boxing’s chances of access to the mainstream in the future.
What went wrong?
The PBC has battled various headwinds from the start. There are elements in the press and among the boxing establishment that were never rooting for it. Lawsuits have made as many headlines as the fights.
Negative press, legal issues, and competitors don’t fully explain the problem. The nature of the programming has been its Achilles heel. The PBC has lacked any sort of internal logic, structure, or sense of build.
These are real problems.
The PBC has a significant portion of the 147 and 154 lb. landscape in house. Mixing and matching those talents in a way that produced drama and anticipation for future clashes shouldn’t have been like pulling teeth. In the early 1980s, matinee memories were made in a series of fights between Bobby Chacon, Cornelius Boza-Edwards, Bazooka Limon, and Rolando Navarrete.
The PBC might not have had those sorts of action heroes.
That’s no excuse for nights like Erislandy Lara-Jan Zaveck or Keith Thurman-Luis Collazo. When Danny Garcia and Keith Thurman both scored strong ratings in their maiden PBC voyages, wouldn’t it have made sense to immediately start moving them towards each other? Talking up a potential clash on the air?
This Saturday, Thurman will face Shawn Porter in an interesting showdown of top ten welterweights. It took a long time to make (injury delay notwithstanding).
Why?
Neither is a big draw or has been particularly active as part of the PBC series. It’s nice to have this fight on the horizon but this sort of drawing out of fights that are really what should be standard clashes of top ten welterweights points to the PBC not having any more control over the matchmaking of boxing than anyone else.
It makes it common, and prone to the common pitfalls of the sport in consistent matchmaking.
Inconsistent matchmaking isn’t just a PBC problem. This week, HBO announced it would invest resources in what amounts to an infomercial for Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev in letting Ward fight Alexander Brand. That’s not a competitive fight on paper. Airing Kovalev-Isaac Chilemba at least puts Kovalev in with a fighter who can be seen, as a contender at 175 lbs. but it’s only nominally better on paper. Take away HBO’s Fight of the Year leader in Orlando Salido-Francisco Vargas, and this has not been a banner year for HBO either.
At least there is a point. HBO is building towards a moment with monetary incentive. Where does Thurman-Porter lead? Will Garcia be at ringside? Will Errol Spence? Boxing is exciting in the moment but it always needs a ‘what next.’
So what’s next?
Without having ideas as to those answers, fewer and fewer seem to be tuning in. It feels like a series of random matches that might lead to something bigger but, hey, we’ll see.
The other issue has been the lack of focus on singular potential stars. Boxing is a draw-based sport. It always has been. Fight sports in general are. UFC has done good business for a decade. Business is better when a Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, or Conor McGregor headlines. In well over a year, who has emerged as a potential star in the PBC?
The easiest answer should have been heavyweight Deontay Wilder. The quickest path to fan interest hasn’t changed. Big men with big punching power and personality are, historically, boxing’s surest bet. It has been said in this space before, and bears repeating: Wilder should have been the centerpiece from the start.
Maybe it’s the Mayweather effect. His presence brought attention to welterweight, the heavyweight scene was mostly overseas, so it stands to reason you’d program in Mayweather’s neighborhood. That meant two of Wilder’s three outings since the launch of the PBC have been on non-PBC Showtime cards.
That’s not a bad thing for Showtime and for hardcore fights fans, well, they’re going to watch wherever he is. As noted though, PBC cards on national networks have drawn more eyes than your average premium cards.
For a venture willing to put in millions to invest in the sport, how can that investment not have tried to build a star at heavyweight? This weekend, the WBC titlist Wilder will be on Showtime building interest in a possible showdown with IBF titlist Anthony Joshua. World champion Tyson Fury was in the ring, talking smack, after Wilder’s last Showtime appearance. Either could be a stadium fight in the UK in short order.
That’s how basic it is to build to something people want to see. Those, and what could still be a mandated showdown with Alexander Povetkin, are all fights fans will anticipate for Wilder. His career has direction.
That’s something it too often has felt like the PBC lacked. This weekend, we have Thurman-Porter. It’s a good fight. Based on the way the PBC has been handled, it’s a good fight that will have fewer eyes than it could have.
Where we go from here is unclear. That’s not a positive.
