Doghouseboxing.com reports that last weekend’s light heavyweight (175 lbs.) championship bout between Joe Calzaghe and Roy Jones, Jr. did rather modest pay-per-view business:
It looks like financial tough times are hitting everyone, everywhere. Although the Pay-Per-View number for Joe Calzaghe vs Roy Jones Jr. have yet to be officially released, the word on the beat is not looking good.
According to a source close to Doghouse Boxing, Joe Calzaghe vs Roy Jones Jr. did not do as well as expected in terms of Pay-Per-View numbers. HBO was expecting half million buys, but has in return gotten just shy of 225,000 buys.
The figure sounds about like I would’ve guessed. If HBO was expecting a half million buys, though, they were C-R-A-Z-Y. It’s not just the financial times. If the numbers are accurate, it’s also because Calzaghe has not proven himself as a draw here; Jones was never the pay-per-view star some thought he could have been; and the half million buys or so done by Jones-Felix Trinidad earlier this year were almost assuredly all Trinidad fans. Combined with the fact that hardly any hardcore fans were looking forward to this fight, it all adds up to a fight that rather obviously wasn’t going to do big business.
Certainly, it wasn’t because “some critics believe that Joe Calzaghe and Roy Jones Jnr not fighting for one of the legitimate sanctioning belts diminished their contest.” I don’t know anyone who said that. The fight was for the light heavyweight championship of the world, the real one. But as the author of that piece goes on to say, what matters most is quality fighters fighting quality opponents. No offense to what Roy Jones once was, but he’s not that anymore. Nobody in their right mind gave Jones much of a chance of beating Calzaghe. One quality fighter that is neither well-known nor particularly popular in the United States fighting a fighter whose quality had been in sharp decline for years does not a major attraction make. This fight should never have been on pay-per-view.
(And if Doghouseboxing.com’s report is incorrect, I take it all back.)
