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Toney vs. Peter
By Zach Arnold | September 3, 2006
We’re talking about the James Toney vs. Samuel Peter fight from Saturday night in Los Angeles. Read some recaps and decide for yourself who won the fight. One thing is for sure – drawing 9,852 fans at Staples Center is quite an eye-opener.
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A quote from the LA Times article:
Duva said he was more interested in seeing his fighter take on World Boxing Council champion Oleg Maskaev.
The same Oleg Maskaev who, last month, drew an estimated 60,000 buys on PPV for his fight against Hasim Rahman.
Topics: All Topics, Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 7 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Zach, this is boxing, remember that. Show attendances and ppv buyrates shouldn’t matter completely. At least not to us. Even though boxing is a business first, sport second, but whatever. The Peter/Maskaev fight is inevitably going to happen. If it draws only 1/3 house, and only gets a 0.1 buyrate, so be it. I saw the fight last night (unfortunately, I missed Aiken/Guerrero. I got home from work to late to catch the first fight. But I did see Toney/Peter in full. Caught it right on time for the fighter intros) and it was ok. I don’t totally blame the two judges who had Peter winning, but I do think Toney should have gotten the nod.
But I do think the Peter/Maskaev fight should be on regular HBO or Showtime.
Chuck, to be fair, however, house attendance and buyrates/ratings do matter in the long run. Given that a promoter wants to at least break even on any card they run (so they don’t lose out in the end), they want to make sure that the house and buyrate/rating combination (as well as any advertising spots on or during the program) will break them from losing money on the deal. Promoters do want to make money in the end, but not every fighter is a De La Hoya or Tyson-level draw that will guarentee loads of money, so sometimes they have to make solid cards with not-so-large drawing cards to try and justify a PPV purchase (such as the upcoming Barrera/Juarez II card) or to buy tickets to the show.
The problem is that when you are paying guys who are essentially non-draws like Hasim Rahman $1 million+ and try to put the card on a PPV in a large venue, you are going to lose out on money. The reason that Bob Arum made money in his career wasn’t putting together 2 Heavyweights that had less than stellar careers (Rahman besides his one punch KO of Lewis & Maskaev besides his own first KO of Rahman), it was by booking the biggest names possible against each other (such as Hagler vs. Hearns, Hagler vs. Duran & Hagler vs. Leonard) and letting the dough roll in. Arum basically seems to have grown so complacent with his own achievements that he doesn’t even remember that it was smart booking of top talent with ample credentials that got him his many millions.
I agree with you Tomer. But sometimes many people talk about the politics of boxing like it is the politics of pro wrestling. No Zach, that is not a shot against you. Sure, they have their similarities (the similarities of pro wrestling and MMA are more correct though) but saying that the Maskaev/Peter fight SHOULDN’T happen just because the ppv buyrates sucked and the ticket sales were only OKAY is kind of ludicrous. But Maskaev/Peter should not be a ppv. But a regular HBO or SHOWTIME. And of course the ppv buyrates and ticket sales matter, I am not that retarded on business practices. And I have to give credit to Arum who has admitted that the Maskaev/Rahman ppv didn’t do well ppv buyrate wise.
Very true Tomer, but Arums problem now is that in the sports most visible division (heavyweight) there are no better draws than the ones he is dealing with right now. It was much easier in the past to make millions off of even the lower weight divisions because of the marquis names in boxing. The best matchup in all of boxing today would not have as much appeal to the general public as did many undercard fights ten years ago.
That was an excellent fight. For what it’s worth (which isn’t much), I had it 6 rounds to 6, which would mean that Toney would win by 1 point because of the point deduction. I actually had Samuel Peter up 6 rounds to 4 going into Round 11, but in Rounds 11 and 12, Toney didn’t do much and Samuel Peter did even less, so I gave the last two rounds to Toney.
That fight was extremely difficult to score, more than probably any fight in the past year, because you really had to be watching closely to see when Peter did or did not rock Toney with his power punches. The judges do not have the benefit of camera angles, TIVO, slo-mo, and not being corrupt. (I only make that last comment because scoring it 9 rounds to 3 in favor of Peter is a bit silly.)
10,000 people attending a boxing card is not a bad number at all. With the decent seats at $300 & $150, you’re looking at a pretty nice gate.
As for Rahman-Maskaev doing 60,000 PPV buys, I don’t see how that should have any bearing whatsoever on whether or not Peter chooses to fight Maskaev next or not. There are four so called Heavyweight champions right now. Maskaev is the oldest and most beatable. He also happens to hold the most prestigious of the 4 titles. He brings the most reward and least risk of any championship fight out there. Peter would have to be an absolute fool to do anything other than demand his promised title shot.
[…] Oleg Maskaev has his Christmas card ready to send and mail off to Iron Mike now. […]