Golovkin vs Geale tanks in TV ratings, draws under 800K on HBO

Gennady Golovkin's return to HBO resulted in another destructive, eye-catching sort of win over Daniel Geale this past Saturday, but there just weren't that many eyes to catch. According to Jake Donovan and Nielsen Media Research, the fight did an average of 758,000 viewers on HBO, cutting Golovkin's audience nearly in half from his last HBO appearance in November 2013.

Golovkin (30-0, 27 KO) stopped Geale in three rounds on Saturday at Madison Square Garden, but the matchup with the Aussie just didn't capture the American TV audience's interest, it would appear. Donovan notes that when adding DVR first-time viewings, the show got closer to one million viewers, but didn't quite reach that, meaning that this was HBO's first sub-1MM viewer fight of 2014.

This also indicates that for as impressive as Golovkin has been in the ring, there is still plenty of work to do to make him a legitimate star, and that he's a good ways off from being a serious A-side fighter in the business sense. That said, the good news is that HBO and K2 Promotions do understand that, and that they're not looking to rush him to pay-per-view or anything, which would be the logical (well, "logical") next step at this stage of Golovkin's career. If he's going to get there, it will have to be as a B-side, which would also mean finding an A-side willing to actually fight him.