Hopkins-Smith peaks at over 1M viewers

Bernard Hopkins’ final fight against Joe Smith Jr. did some pretty decent ratings, all things considered. HBO’s Hopkins-Smith card last weekend averaged 934,000 viewers, and peaked at 1,035,000 viewers in the final round when Hopkins was knocked through the ropes and unable to continue. All stats come courtesy of Nielsen Media Research, via RingTV. And needless to say, that outcome of that fight certainly wasn’t how Hopkins’ expected to end his HOF career.

The co-feature of the card was a fight between featherweights Joseph Diaz Jr. and Horacio Garcia which averaged 644,000 viewers and peaked at 707,000. Finally, the opening act of the card, a fight between cruiserweights Oleksandr Usyk and Thabiso Mchunu, averaged 560,000 viewers and topped out at 645,000.

To sort of put these numbers in perspective, HBO’s last card featuring Terence Crawford vs. John Molina averaged 807,000 viewers and topped out at 871,000 — although it should be noted that that card went head-to-head with Showtime’s Cuellar-Mares card which averaged 327,000 viewers.