Photo by Steve Marcus/Getty Images
Saturday’s Showtime Boxing pay-per-view is a far better offering than your typical boxing PPV.
We haven’t done a lot of boxing coverage in recent months on Bloody Elbow. Some of this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic wiping out or postponing a lot of compelling matchups, and the rest of it is that the fights that have been booked are just not that interesting or particularly relevant for us to cover. It’s safe to say that the UFC has fared substantially better than boxing in terms of maintaining fan interest and booking the best fights even during a pandemic. There are many reasons for that, but we’ll save that for another op-ed.
This weekend’s PBC card on Showtime PPV is top to bottom the deepest boxing show of the year. It is rather unfortunate timing that this is opposite UFC 253, which was initially set for September 19th, but it is nevertheless a card worth watching.
One of the rightful knocks against boxing is that the sport’s pay-per-views usually have no depth, with the main event often serving as the only fight of any intrigue. We’ve become accustomed to an assortment of dreary, lopsided undercard bouts in front of a mostly empty arena, with fans only pouring in close to main event time.
Well there are no fans for the foreseeable future, so the onus is on matchmakers to make their TV-only audience justify their decision to fork over $75. While I’m never keen on the idea of paying up $75 for any pay-per-view, this is far better value than similarly priced or even more expensive PPVs from years past.
For starters, this is technically two events for the price of one. Jermall Charlo vs. Sergiy Derevyanchenko for Charlo’s WBC middleweight title is considered one main event, while Jermell Charlo vs. Jeison Rosario for the WBA, WBC, and IBF junior middleweight belts is the other main event. Each main event has two supporting undercard bouts, and there is a 30-minute intermission following the first Charlo title fight and leading into the second card.
Jermall Charlo is the heavier hitter of the twin brothers, but he lacks that signature win on his record. Sergiy Derevyanchenko is undoubtedly the best opponent he has ever fought, and similarly the former Ukrainian amateur standout lacks a major win. Whereas Charlo has straight up not been booked against elite middleweights, Derevyanchenko has been deeply unlucky to lose decisions to both Daniel Jacobs and Gennadiy Golovkin. Derevyanchenko lacks Charlo’s one-punch power but makes up for it with volume and great cardio, and he had Golovkin in more trouble than any other previous GGG opponent. What bodes poorly for him is early-round knockdowns against Jacobs and GGG, which may very well be his undoing against Jermall.
Charlo-Derevyanchenko is both an even fight on paper and also one of validation for the winner. It’s excellent matchmaking and in theory it should be entertaining.
Then there’s the other Charlo brother, Jermell. He ended his 2018 with a controversial and shocking loss to Tony Harrison to lose his WBC super-welterweight title. After an easy stoppage win over late replacement Jorge Cota, the rematch with Harrison was an insanely fun fight that ended in a dramatic 12th round TKO to win back the belt. The unlikely story is that of Rosario, who wasn’t really on anyone’s radar as a top-ten fighter when he took on unified champion Julian Williams in Williams’ hometown of Philadelphia. It was supposed to be a lay-up for Williams but instead he lost by fifth-round TKO in what is clearly boxing’s biggest upset of 2020, and the Dominican fighter is now fighting for three of the four major belts at 154 lbs.
Charlo is the considerable favorite here but there’s no reason to count Rosario out when he just put away J-Rock in impressive fashion.
As for the undercard, John Riel Casimero defends his WBO bantamweight title against Ghana’s Duke Micah, a 2012 Olympian. Casimero was supposed to fight Naoya Inoue in a unification bout but that is on the shelf for now. The Filipino boxer should know better than to overestimate an opponent, seeing as he won the title in a shocking upset of Zolani Tete. Your less competitive but otherwise guaranteed action fights feature former bantamweight champion Luis Nery against Aaron Alameda in a super-bantamweight fight, former unified super-bantamweight champion Danny Roman against former bantamweight champion Juan Carlos Payano, and rising super-bantamweight contender Brandon Figueroa against Damien Vazquez. Casimero, Nery, Roman, and Figueroa are all comfortable favorites but they’re also fan-friendly fighters taking on capable opposition. (Well, maybe not Nery, but still!)
One thing the UFC gets right more often than not is that even though you were really buying for the main event and/or co-main event, they give you reason to care about the whole card. This Charlo Brothers doubleheader doesn’t quite match the UFC model but the biggest bouts are a case of matching the best vs. the best and it’s about as well as you can do when your pool of available fighters is limited both for promotional reasons and the global pandemic.
Now for the harsh reality: This card is probably going to bomb. UFC 253 has the bigger main event and it’s also going up against college football, the NBA playoffs, and the Stanley Cup Final. Neither Charlo has ever headlined a pay-per-view and promotion for this card has been fairly sparse. With a report that at least four fighters on this card will pull in seven figure purses, it’s quite possible that this is a money losing event. Unfortunately, if not for pay-per-view these fights probably don’t even happen in the first place, so the cost is passed down to the consumer.
My feelings on the very concept of pay-per-view are well known and as DAZN flounders in its attempt to “disrupt” the market, both boxing and the UFC are going harder than ever before in the PPV busines. If it’s not going to go away any time soon, then on the boxing side the cards need to look a lot more like this. It clearly isn’t impossible to pull off, so the onus is on boxing promoters and matchmakers to actually give the fans their money’s worth.