Canelo vs. Fielding had audience of 26 million viewers

By Aragon Garcia

Boxingnews24.com

Saul Canelo Alvarez’s fight last Saturday night against British fighter Rocky Fielding at Madison Square Garden in New York brought in a massive audience of 26 million viewers on TV Azteca and Televisa in Mexico, according to ESPN Deportes. A tremendous audience tuned in to see Canelo (51-1-2, 35 KOs) dispatch WBA super middleweight champion Fielding (27-2, 15 KOs) to make history in winning his third division world title.

10 million boxing fans watched the Canelo-Fielding fight on Televisa, and 16 million watched the fight on Azteca. The 26 million viewers was short of the 34 million that witnessed Canelo’s rematch against former IBF/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin three months ago on September 15 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just 8 million viewer boxing fans viewed the Canelo vs. Fielding fight last weekend. That showed how popular Canelo has become. When he can bring in huge viewing stats against an unknown fighter like Fielding, it’s a strong indication of the popularity that Alvarez now has.

The massive interest Canelo’s fight with Fielding from Mexican fans also resulted in DAZN’s application, the distributors of the Canelo-Fielding fight, was reportedly #1 search for iOS and Android on Google, according to Golden Boy Promotions. Casual boxing fans were highly interested in watching Canelo’s fight against Fielding last weekend. It didn’t matter to them that Canelo wasn’t fighting a global star in boxing like GGG. The fans wanted to see Canelo fight, period.

“This is exciting news for us at Golden Boy Promotions, but it is also no surprise,” Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya said. “When a global sports streaming leader in DAZN begins a historic partnership with the biggest star in boxing, then you can expect fans to swarm their app providers to watch the best pound-for-pound fighter do what he does best. This is a great start to our new partnership.”READ Canelo’s face still damaged from GGG fight

Now it’s important for Canelo to keep up the momentum by continuing to be involved in exciting fights like last Saturday’s.

Canelo did a great job of defeating the tall 6’1″ Fielding to take his WBA super middleweight title last Saturday night. With his inside body attack, Canelo, 28, made short work of Fielding in knocking him down 4 times in the process of stopping him in round 3 in front of a packed solid out crowd of 20,000 boxing fans at Madison Square Garden. The fight was massacre the classical sense in lasting only 9 minutes before the referee Ricky Gonzalez put a stop to it at 2:38 of the third. The fight could have gone on, but it wasn’t going to end well for the 31-year-old Fielding no matter how long fight lasted. He was going to keep getting knocked down from Canelo’s body shots, which the British fighter had no resistance to.

The victory over Fielding is now behind Canelo, and he’s considering his options for his next contest. There’s the possibility of Canelo moving back down to middleweight to face IBF champion Daniel Jacobs in a unification fight on May 4. DAZN would likely be favorable to streaming the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight.