Golovkin-Lemiuex sells roughly 150,000 PPVs

In what proves to be an interesting dichotomy, multiple industry sources are saying Gennady Golovkin's PPV debut against David Lemieux registered only about 150,000 buys, with at least one source saying it was even less than that. Obviously everyone involved hoped for a much better showing on the PPV market, but this is a rather surprising juxtaposition since Golovkin-Lemieux was a pretty hot ticket and did extremely well at the live gate -- breaking a pre-sale record and ultimately selling-out Madison Square Garden to the tune of 20,568 in attendance.

Could this mean that Golovkin is not as big of a star as we all might've thought? It's certainly possible. Golovkin failed to hit the 300,000 mark that both Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather hit on their first PPV, and even did much less than Shane Mosley's "500,000" buys for his recent rematch with Ricardo Mayorga (however ridiculous that claim was). Tom Loeffler, Golovkin's promoter, had said prior to the fight that about 200,000 buys would be sufficient to make the fight a financial success. In that sense, it appears this wasn't.

So if HBO was testing the PPV market for Golovkin here, that aspect surely wasn't a home run, but probably more like a drag bunt single, if that. It looks like the network, promoters, marketers, etc. still have their work cut out for them to bring Golovkin into the big time.

***UPDATE***

.@wil_esco After another day of number crunching, it looks like Golovkin-Lemieux struggling to reach 125,000 PPV buys.

— FIGHTHYPE.COM (@fighthype) October 21, 2015