With the Sergio Martinez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Saul "Canelo" Alvarez-Josesito Lopez bouts both held in Las Vegas last Saturday night, “neither show appeared to suffer” at the gates, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. In fact, “they both seemed to thrive." Top Rank’s HBO PPV card featuring Chavez and Martinez at the Thomas & Mack Center “produced a gate of $3,052,475 from a sellout crowd of 16,939." Top Rank President Todd duBoef and the Nevada State Athletic Commission said that the “arena-record sellout figure of 19,186 announced early during fight week” includes “even those credentialed to be in the building without a ticket -- media members, television production folks, commission officials, hot dog vendors, etc.” Meanwhile, the Golden Boy card of Alvarez-Lopez at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, which was shown on Showtime, “generated a gate of $1,618,150 from 12,860 tickets sold (a sellout).” Thus, on the same night in two arenas that are "walking distance from each other, there were about 30,000 people watching two big-time boxing cards." However, the "downside to this success, of course, is that it probably emboldens Top Rank and Golden Boy, locked in a petty war for years, to go head-to-head again” (ESPN.com, 9/18). Showtime’s “Knockout Kings” “scored record ratings” for the Alvarez-Lopez fight, drawing more than 1 million viewers. The event also drew the largest Hispanic audience for an individual bout on Showtime since '09 (Showtime).
