Quote Originally Posted by stebs
You guys that responded to this thread are younger then me, I was in the 3rd grade and it was ALI vs Fraser, I won 50 cents on that fight, A big bet for an 8 yr old kid, but I wasn't able to see the fight live, I think it was the first fight people had pay to see it live, I do remember they had it at Cobo Hall in Detroit via sattelite or something. I was watching fights before that but can't remember who they were.
Pay Per View is what ruined boxing and has taking it away from the general public, now only the hardcore fans know who the fighters are, when I was a kid all the big fights were on ABC Wide World of Sports and everyone knew who the champions were, but back then we didn't have 4 or 5 champions in a division plus some of these divisions didn't exist.
I think the first Pay Per View fight was a Larry Holmes vs Spinks fight in 1985. Don't quote me on that but I am almost sure of it.

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Pay-per-view has been around since the 1970s, when the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers began using the system after winning the championship in the 1977 season. During that time, it was operated on a few pay-TV services such as Z Channel, SelecTV, and ON TV in select markets throughout the 1980s.

In 1985, the first U.S. cable channels devoted to Pay-Per-View Viewer's Choice Canada, Cable Video Store, and Request TV began operation within days of each other. Viewers Choice was available to both home satellite dish and cable customers, while Request was available to cable viewers but would not be available to dish owners until the 1990s.

However, the term "pay-per-view" wasn't widely used until the 1990s, when companies like iN DEMAND, HBO, and Showtime started using the system to show movies and some of their productions. In Demand would show movies, concerts, and other events, with prices ranging from $3.99 to $49.99, while HBO and Showtime, with their legs TVKO and SET Pay Per View, would offer championship boxing, with prices ranging from $14.99 to $54.99.

ESPN has shown college football and basketball games on pay-per-view. The boxing undercard Latin Fury, shown on June 28 of 2003, became ESPN's first boxing pay-per-view card and also the first pay-per-view boxing card held in Puerto Rico. Pay-per-view is also a very important revenue stream for professional wrestling companies like WWE, which shows fifteen pay-per-view events a year, and TNA, which initially offered weekly pay-per-view in lieu of a national cable television show but now offers monthly pay-per-views like WWE. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) currently holds the rank for most PPV's sold per year.