David Haye Predicts Fight with Klitschko Will Beat Lewis vs Tyson on UK PPV
by Scott Christ on Jun 18, 2011 8:40 PM EDT
in Boxing News Analysis
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Well, David Haye sure is talking a lot this weekend. The WBA heavyweight titlist is predicting that his July 2 fight with Wladimir Klitschko, which airs on Sky Box Office (PPV) in the United Kingdom, will outdo domestic numbers for the massive 2002 battle between Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson. From the Daily Star:
"Pay-per-view numbers will speak for themselves but I believe this will outdo Tyson-Lewis. They were both in the twilight of their careers but this fight has two champions in their prime."
Lewis vs Tyson did 750,000 buys in the UK (the Star is reporting 800K, but 750K is the number I've always seen), and an additional 1.95 million buys in the United States, grossing $106.9 million of pay-per-view revenue in the States alone. Klitschko vs Haye is not on pay-per-view in the U.S., but rather shown live in the afternoon on HBO from Hamburg, Germany.
I follow the British boxing world pretty closely, but I can't say I know whether or not David Haye is a star on the level of Lennox Lewis as a British fighter, but my gut feeling is that this is not quite the event that Lewis vs Tyson was. Tyson was a one-of-a-kind attraction -- even when people knew he couldn't fight much anymore, he was still Mike Tyson, "The Baddest Man on the Planet," and he attracted attention wherever he went. He also put in an all-time high and/or low performance in the lead-up to the Lewis fight, which put the spotlight on the bout in a big way.
Can Klitschko vs Haye sell more than 750K in the UK? Just for reference, the UK record is Mayweather vs Hatton in December 2007, which did over a million buys in the UK, combined with 850K in the States. So what do you figure Klitschko vs Haye comes in at on UK PPV?
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I was of the impression that
both the Valuev and Audley fights did in and around that ball park.
Haha
So true!
"All the time he's boxing, he's thinking. All the time he was thinking, I was hitting him." - Jack Dempsey
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by Drunken cutman on Jun 20, 2011 10:07 AM EDT up reply actions
I must say that Lennox Lewis was a much bigger star than David Haye is currently in the UK, but I heard that the Valuev fight, the fight in which Haye became a star in the UK, did around 700,000 buys due to the last minute promotion. What you must take into account however when comparing Lewis’ and Haye’s pay-per-view numbers is that Sky, the number one UK satellite TV provider, has a lot more subscribers today than it did in 2002. So, had the Lewis-Tyson fight taken place today, it probably would have double the number of buys it did in the UK.
I believe the David Haye fight will do over 750,000 in the UK at a minimum, whether it does more than the 1,200,000 buys that Hatton and Mayweather did, is up in the air, although I believe it will come close to it. The David fight has been given huge promotion over here, there is literally a commercial for the fight every fifteen minutes on the five dedicated Sky Sports channels. It is receiving more promotion than any other fight I can remember in the UK. On top of this, with pay-per-views being relatively cheap in the UK compared to the United States, the fight has a big oppourtunity to break the UK PPV record.
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