HBO's viewership down for Bradley-Rios

Despite two of the more recognizable names in the sport going head-to-head last weekend, the ratings left a little something to be desired. By the end of it, Timothy Bradley won via 9th round KO, Brandon Rios announced his retirement, and HBO might've puked at their ratings the same way they do when they hear the name Guillermo Rigondeaux.

According to Nielsen, Bradley-Rios averaged 910,000 viewers, topping out at 1.03M. This is substantially less than the 1.12M viewers HBO averaged for Bradley-Vargas, despite the network buying this fight for significantly more money, $3 million. The fight even drew less average viewers than Bradley-Chaves, which sat around 966,000 viewers.

Of course there's that college football factor, with Alabama and LSU going at it on CBS, a game that averaged 1.1M viewers. Certainly that didn't help much.

The opening fight for the Bradley-Rios card was between Vasyl Lomachenko and Romulo Koasicha, which averaged 585,000 viewers, peaking at 657,000.