Report: Canelo vs. Chavez PPV did ‘at least 1 million buys’

It looks like Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez is back in the driver’s seat when it comes to being a huge PPV draw. The Mexican superstar drew underwhelming numbers for his last two fights against Liam Smith and Amir Khan, but according to a report from Dan Rafael of ESPN, his bout with Julio Cesar Chavez was a huge hit in terms of PPV buys:

The PPV was widely expected to do better than the Smith and Khan ones, which drew 300k and somewhere between 460 and 600k respectively, simply because Chavez and Alvarez are both revered in their home country of Mexico. There was more intrigue here too due to Canelo going up in weight and facing the biggest man of his career. But still, this is a fantastic number, one that very much surprised me.

Alvarez ended up dominating the fight, taking every round on the way to a unanimous decision. After the bout, middleweight king Gennady Golovkin entered the ring and a bout between Alvarez and Triple G was announced for September. This is the undoubtedly the biggest bout in boxing since Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao in 2015, and will likely do even better than this PPV did from a buys standpoint.