Big Question: Will you buy Saturday’s Charlo PPV?

Photo by Steve Marcus/Getty Images

Is the lineup good enough, or is a $75 price tag too steep?

“The Big Question” is a new weekly feature here at Bad Left Hook, which will run on Tuesdays at Noon ET.

Last Week’s Question

Last week in the first edition of this feature, we asked if you thought DAZN would still be in the boxing game after 2021. After a week of of voting in the poll, 55% of you said no. That’s not overwhelming, but it speaks to the level of faith in DAZN right now, at least in its boxing endeavors. That level is fairly low, and it’ll be up to DAZN to change minds by putting on a good schedule of fights.

This Week’s Question

This one isn’t one that needs much deep thought, it’s pretty simple.

On Saturday night, Showtime and PBC will present a pay-per-view featuring both Charlo brothers in action, and they’re in good matchups, too.

WBC 154-pound titleholder Jermell (33-1, 17 KO) will unify against WBA/IBF titlist Jeison Rosario (20-1-1, 14 KO), which is a No. 1 vs No. 2 fight at junior middleweight for most people at the moment. We’ll also Jermall (30-0, 22 KO) defend his WBC middleweight title against Sergiy Derevyanchenko (13-2, 10 KO), a legitimate, highly-regarded contender who has fought at the top level at 160 before, which Jermall kind of hasn’t.

Those are good fights. But this show also has a $75 pay-per-view price tag, and the timing just might not be good, in terms of business on the Showtime/PBC end. Add in the fact that we’ve got other PBC PPVs coming (Gervonta Davis-Leo Santa Cruz in October, Errol Spence Jr-Danny Garcia in November), and people might want to sit on their PPV money if they can only really afford one, or even two of them.

It’s no secret that times are tough for a lot of people out there. The coronavirus pandemic has put a lot of people out of work in the last six months, and my guess is that’s had at least some impact even on boxing’s cable and network TV ratings since sport’s U.S. re-start in June, as plenty of people have surely had to do away with things like TV subscriptions for the time being.

We’ll get into this deeper with full previews for the fights on Thursday, but the pros of this show are obvious. Both of the Charlo fights are really good matchups on paper, the sort of pairings we all want to see more of all the time in the sport, where you have two top five (at least) type guys matched against one another.

PBC and Showtime have also stacked the card a bit, at least in terms of quantity, as there will be four PPV undercard fights, six total instead of the usual four total. Quality is a lot more debatable, but they can boast, for whatever it’s worth, of there being three world title bouts and a title eliminator on the show. And however you rate the matchups, that does mean that every fight on this show is relevant to its weight class, too.

Are the main events good enough for you? Is the attempt at filling out a bigger overall card enough of an added incentive? Is the time just bad for you financially?

And, look, it’s 2020, let’s ask this, because it matters: is it simply too easy for you to steal the show instead of spending your money on it?

Are you ordering the PPV, as in paying for the broadcast, this Saturday?