Deontay Wilder vs. Robert Helenius was always going to be a hard sell at $74.99, and it looks like the marketing engines behind it weren’t quite up to snuff. Dan Rafael reports that the pay-per-view generated around 75,000 buys, beating out last month’s Andy Ruiz Jr vs Luis Ortiz show by ~10k.
As Rafael points out, the show was kinda doomed from the start. Even putting aside that viewers paid the price of a current-generation AAA video game for less than three minutes of action, it went head-to-head with Devin Haney vs George Kambosos Jr 2 and assorted college football games. It’s a shame, because it did produce a pair of terrific knockouts.
That said, one would hope that this would get the powers-that-be to reconsider their broadcast structure.