Canelo Predicts: Crawford Clash To Eclipse Mayweather’s 2.2 Million PPV Buys, Despite His Lackluster Draw

Canelo Alvarez predicts his possible fight against Terence Crawford in September will produce more pay-per-view buys than his mega-clash against then superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013. That fight brought in 2.2 million PPV buys on Showtime.

Unified super middleweight champion Alvarez’s fight against the 40-ish Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) is being talked about being shown on Netflix as part of TKO Boxing. Unfortunately, that doesn’t sound reality-based. Crawford is NOT a popular fighter among non-hardcore boxing fans.

Bigger Than Floyd?

While Turki Alalshikh likes Bud Crawford and enjoys his defensive counter-punching style, U.S. fans have never been excited about his career. They have not shown interest in his career like they have with fighters with more entertaining styles, such as Errol Spence [before his car crash], Canelo, David Benavidez, and Gervonta Davis.

Turki has picked the wrong fighter to hitch his wagon around because U.S fans aren’t excited about Crawford. They don’t like the idea behind 40-year-old moving up two weight classes to challenge Canelo for his 168-lb titles. That’s a gimmick fight.

The Omaha, Nebraska native Crawford lacks the exciting style and charisma to be a huge PPV draw for a fight against Canelo. He’s made no effort to increase his popularity on social media the way other fighters do, and it’s too late now for him to start building in that area

Crawford’s Numbers

– Israil Madrimov: 200,000 buys on DAZN & ESPN
– Errol Spence: 700,000 on Showtime
– David Avanesyan: 120,000 on BLK Prime
– Shawn Porter: 190,000 on ESPN
– Amir Khan: 200,000 on ESPN
– Viktor Postol: 60,000 on HBO

The only fight in Crawford’s career that has brought in good PPV numbers was his fight against Errol Spence Jr. in 2023. The success of that event was due to Spence, not Crawford. He’s not a pay-per-view draw and his recent fight against Israil Madrimov showed that with the lackluster numbers it brought in.

“I think it’s going to be bigger, even than the Mayweather fight. It’s going to be bigger than that,” said Canelo Alvarez to iFL TV about his potential fight against Terence Crawford being bigger than his match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013 on Showtime. “Yeah, I think so [Canelo-Crawford will do more pay-per-view buys than the Mayweather-Canelo fight].”

Even with Netflix showing the Canelo vs. Crawford fight, it’ll likely do fewer numbers than Alvarez’s last fight against Edgar Berlanga on September 14th. That event brought in 650,000 buys.