Andre Ward tops Terence Crawford's ratings for HBO

Andre Ward fought on HBO for the first time since November 2013 and performed pretty well in the ratings department. Ward's decision win against Barrera averaged 1.064 million viewers on HBO, peaking at 1.152 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

It's possible that Ward's fall showdown against Sergey Kovalev drew some additional interest to the fight, or it could have been the star power present (Steph Curry and Michael B. Jordan). Or maybe, just maybe, people are more interested in Andre Ward than you would believe. Either way, Ward's ratings rivaled that of Sergey Kovalev when he fought Jean Pascal in January, a fight which averaged 1.179 million viewers.

Additionally significant was that Ward-Barrera was running up against the NCAA tournament's Elite Eight games, which averaged 11.6M viewers on CBS. That's not bad for boxing. Ward-Barrera even did better numbers than HBO's new love in Terence Crawford, who averaged 982,000 viewers for his fight against Hank Lundy last month.

All signs are pointing to significant interest in the much anticipated fight between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev later this year.