Marquez vs Alvarado peaks at 1.3 million viewers on HBO, averages 1.2 million

This past Saturday night's HBO World Championship Boxing show delivered the viewers, as Juan Manuel Marquez returned to regular HBO for the first time since his 2010 win over Michael Katsidis, beating Mike Alvarado in the main event in what was also boxing's return to The Forum in Los Angeles.

Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports tweeted the numbers this afternoon:

The @HBOBoxing show on Saturday did good numbers. Marquez fight averaged 1.198 mm, peaked at 1.322. Postol fight averaged 1.002, peak 1.137

— Kevin Iole (@KevinI) May 20, 2014

A 1.2 million average is quite good, right about as high as anything does on either HBO or Showtime anymore, and the peak number is strong.

Marquez (56-7-1, 41 KO) now appears set for a fifth fight on HBO pay-per-view later this year with Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO), in what may be the only actually available fight for Pacquiao that will go over one million buys at the moment, a large part of the credit for that, in theory, due to Marquez being a popular Mexican fighter who can carry his share of the load, which Timothy Bradley and Brandon Rios could not in Pacquiao's last two bouts. In fact, the only time in his last four fights that Pacquiao's fight has gone over a million buys is the fourth fight with Marquez in late 2012. His two fights with Bradley were both under, and the Rios fight was far under.