Showtime’s Espinoza says Gervonta Davis vs. Ryan Garcia “doesn’t make sense” for a generic PPV

Via Craig Daly: Showtime president Stephen Espinoza says he’s not in favor of conducting a DAZN-related pay-per-view fight with his company for the fight between Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and Ryan Garcia.

Espinoza felt that things would be more complicated if he needed to do dual network transactions between Tank and Ryan. Unfortunately, Garcia’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotion, said he wanted his broadcast partner, DAZN, to join because they helped build Ryan.

De La Hoya doesn’t seem to agree to let 23-year-old Ryan (23-0, 19 KOs) fight on Showtime without DAZN’s involvement. As such, it’s likely, we won’t see the Davis-Garcia fight unless Espinoza changes his mind about it being shown only on Showtime.

What that means for boxing fans is that they’ll likely see Tank Davis rematches against Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero and Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz rather than a fight with Ryan Garcia.

It’s fine if fans don’t mind re-watching Tank’s fights with kt Rolly and Pitbull. However, the pay-per-view purchase probably won’t be too big for either of those matches since Tank beat them.

“In my personal opinion, it makes no sense to do a general pay-per-view,” Showtime president Stephen Espinoza told. Fighthype about his unwillingness to do a double cyber war involving DAZN and Showtime.

“I don’t think people appreciate how difficult, painful and time-consuming it is when you have to have each other’s consent on every little detail.

“Forget the important things about how much money you will spend on marketing and what the marketing plan is. All those things. You remember Mayweather-Pacquiao. It was such a difficult process.

“Remember something ticket didn’t go on sale until a week before, and that’s because people have different business practices and disagreements. I’m not saying that’s going to happen with DAZN. I just think we did it in boxing in two games.

“We did it for Lewis-Tyson, and we did it for Mayweather-Pacquiao. With all due respect to Ryan and Tank, this fight isn’t too big. It’s not as big as those. There are other ways to solve this problem. I think there are other fair ways to do this.

“I think people immediately go for pay-per-view. Okay, I see why DAZN wants that. They want to be relevant here in the United States, which they have very little at the moment.

Having said that, there are many ways to do this. Even if it’s the Munguia situation where you start talking about the rematch for the second fight, and you can flip the bet.

“There are cases where the Top Rated has done with Lomachenko. They let him go get the belt on the DAZN and come back. From what I heard from DAZN, they are pretty good in terms of pay per view [for Gervonta vs. Ryan Garcia].

“I think in their case, they should let him [Ryan] go get a belt if they think he’s going to beat Tank, then go back and get on with the rest of their careers, and they all live happily ever after.

“That is my personal opinion. The current. I am not the only opinion on the whole matter. So if the boxers come together and come to an agreement, and I get the call and say, ‘Hey, we’ve reached an agreement with Ryan and the Golden Boy’s side, and it’s going to have to be a deal. pay-per-view. ‘ Then again, I’m not leaving.

“But if you ask me how I am going to restructure this deal, no, I am not going to embark on a pay-per-view joint. That’s a good question,” Espinoza said when asked how many pay-per-views buying Tank Davis compared to Ryan Garcia.

“There is always a wild card. Sometimes you cause a fight and it burns out beyond what you expected. Sometimes it captures the imagination.

“Even Mayweather versus Pacquiao and McGregor went further than people expected. So there’s always upside potential, but other than that, take a look at recent pay-per-view history.

“High watermark for the biggest skirmishes, Floyd and Logan aside, which outsells everything. You put that aside and just talk pay per view. Canelo has bought 800,000, and Fury 2 is 750, and 800 are the two highest buys.

“By comparison, it can [Davis vs. Ryan Garcia] do Canelo numbers? Really hard. Canelo has been a phenomenon for too long. It’s hard to say that there are others that will pop up and match it.

“I would say it’s a bit lacking in that. Maybe in six figures, 400, 500,000 purchases. Maybe it’s more. It’s one of those things that captures the imagination. They have two different fan bases and it can go beyond that.

“It’s one of the biggest battles that can be made,” Espinoza said. No one wants to stop it from happening. That doesn’t mean we have to commit to a deal structure that doesn’t make sense,” Espinoza said.