Promoter Oscar De La Hoya claims that Vergil Ortiz Jr. vs. Terence Crawford will do 1 million PPV buys.
De La Hoya feels there’s enough interest from fans for a clash between Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) and Vergil (22-0, 21 KOs) to sell 1 million buys. The two fighters could meet in February at one of His Excellency Turki Alalshikh’s events.
Lack of Star Power
Crawford isn’t a PPV draw, nor is Vergil Ortiz, who isn’t well-known to casual boxing fans. Last Saturday night, Vergil fought the first fight of his eight-year professional career against an upper-tier fighter, Serhii Bohachuk, and he did not perform well.
Crawford vs. Vergil Jr. would be poison for PPV and could bomb badly, likely bringing in 200K buys at best, depending on how well-stocked the undercard is for the event. The charisma isn’t there, and both coming off controversial decisions.
Even if you don’t want to label them controversial, Crawford and Vergil’s performances were still unimpressive. If these two could buy some personality at Walmart, it might do well, but I hate to say it, this will be an utter disaster for PPV.
“I think the only fights that do over a million homes because to do a million homes, there’s a lot going on [with other sources of non-boxing entertainment for fans]. People have short memories here, so they want to see the best fight the best,” said promoter Oscar De La Hoya to the Club Shay Shay YouTube site.
“I think the only fights that [do 1 million PPV buys] are Canelo-Terence Crawford, anything with Ryan Garcia, Vergil Ortiz-Terence Crawford. There’s several out there, but you just need that perfect dance partner,” said De La Hoya.
No Charisma, Experience, and Marketability
If Turki includes actual popular fighters, like Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz, it might do more than 200K, but not because of the main event between Crawford and Vergil. That’s a disaster.
The problem with Crawford-Ortiz Jr:
- Both lack charisma
- Casual fans unfamiliar with them
- Little experience in big fights: Crawford has only one big fight in his career. Vergil has never been in a notable fight, and you can’t count Bohachuk as being a big one. Fans weren’t familiar with that guy.
- Poor salesmanship
- Dull interviews
It’s not an ideal time for Vergil and Crawford to fight on PPV, given that both are coming off controversial wins that many boxing fans saw them losing.
Vergil was knocked down twice but given a questionable 12-round majority decision over WBC interim junior middleweight champion Serghii Bohachuk. The judges gave Ortiz Jr, 26, the win by the scores 113, 114-112 and 114-112.
Fans viewed the fight as a draw or a close victory for the champion Bohachuk but not Vergil, who took a beating in the fight. As for Crawford, he was given a questionable 12-round unanimous decision win over WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov on August 3rd.
Madrimov lit him up with his right hands all night, but the judges focused on the jabs that Crawford landed when scoring the fight. In other words, they scored the fight like it was an amateur event rather than a professional one.
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