Lara-Hurd turns out to be least watched Showtime main event of the year

We had a surefire Fight Of The Year candidate take place this past weekend, with Erislandy Lara and Jarrett Hurd putting on an excellent performance on a Showtime main event. But it turns out that for as great a fight it was, it didn’t exactly translate in the ratings department.

ESPN reports, per Nielsen Media Research, that the Lara-Hurd main event averaged only 490,000 viewers, peaking at 521,000. That makes the fight the least watched main event of the year for the network, for any card that started during prime time. And that’s a genuine shame considering it was an amazing contest to witness.

Showtime, however, didn’t do itself any favors here. This scheduled tripleheader began at 10 p.m. ET and the Lara-Hurd main event didn’t start until an exhausting 12:43 a.m. ET! I was covering the fight live for BLH, and I can tell you that the timing made it a real chore.

The co-feature fight between James DeGale and Caleb Truax averaged 469,000 viewers, peaking at 510,000, while the opening fight between Julian Williams and Nathaniel Gallimore averaged 376,000 viewers and peaked at 479,000.

Hopefully the network learned a lesson from this going forward and we can either get less filler content in between fights, a fewer number of fights (with a 10 p.m. ET start time), or maybe just an earlier kick off.

But if you haven’t had a chance to catch this fight yet, perhaps because you were tucked asleep, do yourself a favor and get to it. It was one to watch.