Showtime announces Bernard Hopkins-Jean Pascal bout as end of season freebie
A December 18 bout in Quebec City between unified light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal and legend Bernard Hopkins will save fans the standard fifty dollars to watch on Pay-Per-View.
The fight, originally slated as a Showtime PPV, has been moved to regular Showtime Thursday evening programming.
"We are thrilled to be able to offer this important championship fight directly to our loyal subscribers and fight fans," said Ken Hershman, the executive vice president of Showtime Sports.
"This is a milestone fight for each man's respective career and thus this matchup fits perfectly into our programming strategy, to televise the most competitive and meaningful bouts in the sport. I want to thank the promoters for this event, Group Yvon Michel
Inc., Golden Boy Promotions, and, of course, the fighters themselves for working with us to bring this bout to our faithful audience. It's an early holiday present for Showtime fight fans."
After some calculations, Showtime bigwigs determined that the fight didn’t have the gusto to sell on a PPV platform. Hopkins, who will be 46 just weeks after the bout, fought Roy Jones Jr. in a rematch in April, and the fight tanked significantly on PPV
(failing to get more than 150,000 buys). In comparison, the Floyd Mayweather-Shane Mosley fight in May garnered almost ten times that at 1,400,000 buys.
As well, November up to early December in the boxing world is loaded with attractive bouts, with Hopkins-Pascal weighing in later in December after everybody is expected to have spent their money on earlier fights and Christmas presents.
With these factors considered, fans shouldn’t credit the Showtime freebie to goodwill. Showtime had a lot of money to play with after Super Six tournament revisions, meaning they weren’t exactly praying Hops and Pascal would guarantee them annual quotas.
Because Mikkel Kessler ended up dropping out of the Super Six tournament, his original September 25 bout with Allan Green was altered to include Glen Johnson on November 6. The change saved Showtime a lot of money, since Johnson as a replacement was much
cheaper than Kessler as an original participant. The same goes with Sakio Bika, who will replace Andre Dirrell in the November 27 bout against Andre Ward.
Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer offered a bit of the back story, with, "Ken Hershman approached me with the idea and we started talking and we found a way to get it done. This is tremendous to have a fight like that to end 2010. I think it's ending on a
high note. I'm really excited that fight fans in the United States will be able to see it live on Showtime without having to go in their pocket for Pay-Per-View. It shows the commitment Showtime has to boxing and that they can have the necessary funding in
the fourth quarter to make it happen. It's fantastic."
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