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Last Saturday’s Showtime Championship Boxing tripleheader, highlighted by Future Hall of Famer Bernard Hopkins,drew the second largest average audience for a live Showtime boxing event this year and ranks as the third-highest average on record for the premium network since 2004 when Nielsen began tracking pay television networks’ individual channels.
The high viewership average across the 3-hour, 30-minute telecast brings Showtime Championship Boxing’s average viewership for the year up 23 percent from last year and a remarkable 62 percent from 2011.
Presented by Golden Boy Promotions from Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, the main event bout between Hopkins and world-ranked championship contender Karo Murat drew a peak audience of one million viewers, ranking third for the year behind to the peak audience from June’s Adrien Broner vs. Paulie Malignaggi (1.3 million) and April’s Canelo Alvarez vs. Austin Trout (1.1 million). Hopkins vs. Murat’s peak audience is the fifth highest on record for the network which now has seen its top-five largest boxing audiences in the last 13 months.
“Showtime has quickly emerged as the premiere destination for big-time boxing,” said Stephen Espinoza, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Showtime Sports.
“We have the biggest stars in the sport fighting their most challenging, and often career-defining, fights. It’s no surprise that our subscribers have responded. We are thrilled with the gains we have achieved thus far, but we are not finished yet. It all starts with the commitment from the fighters–and their promoters–to challenge themselves against top contenders. As such, the drama has never been greater, the stakes never higher.”
As previously announced, Showtime Championship Boxing and promotional partner Golden Boy Promotions have scheduled major events on back-to-back Saturdays in December that include a combined six world championship fights to close out the year.
The first of the blockbuster events is Saturday, Dec. 7 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., and will feature former five-time, two-division World Champion Zab “Super” Judah (42-8, 29 KO’s) taking on former two-time, two-division World Champion Paulie “Magic Man” Malignaggi (32-5, 7 KO’s) in the 12-round main event, plus three world championship fights on the Showtime televised undercard.
Then, on Saturday, Dec. 14, there are three world title bouts scheduled on a four-fight Showtime Championship Boxing telecast from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, topped by an eagerly awaited matchup between undefeated WBA Welterweight Champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner and the dangerous, hard-hitting Marcos “El Chino” Maidana.
