According to paid-for, compromised media critics and weirdo, obsessed culture-warrin’ fans, Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) has been going out of business since, well, pretty much since they began the business. Seriously.
Way back in 2015– the first year of PBC’s existence– these people were all curled up in their feelings, declaring that the Al Haymon company was on the verge of a collapse. And for more than a decade now, these same people have been riding a wave of wishful thinking, predicting that the end was near.
And, to be honest, 2024 certainly looked like the year their long-standing prediction was finally going to come true.
In their first year working with Amazon Prime, PBC only put on five shows from March 30 to the end of the year– and four of them were pay-per-views.
Things looked bleak. You could almost hear the company death gasp. Dates never materialized, PBC stalwart stars disappeared into black holes of inactivity, and hungry, peripheral company players began to drift off to other companies.
The fall of PBC also happened to coincide with the rise of the Saudi influence in boxing, led by cash-flinging figurehead Turki Alalshikh.
The serial critics celebrated the (finally) demise of that evil, evil PBC because, apparently, a murderous monarchy buying up all your assets to take overseas > A black-owned business.
But that Saudi takeover hasn’t gone as smoothly as Turki and his gobblers would’ve liked and, meanwhile, from the looks of things, PBC is not quite dead.
So far this year, PBC has had three cards– two well-received pay-per-views and Saturday’s “free” Sebastian Fundora-Chordale Booker card. Another “free” card is planned for April 5 from Australia as Tim Tszyu takes on Joey Spencer.
The March 1 Gervonta Davis-Lamont Roach pay-per-view reportedly generated an astonishing (for this day and age) 260K buys. The February 1 David Benavidez vs. David Morrell show, by the way, also did quite well (all things considered) with between 150K and 160K buys.
Ironically enough, the rise of Saudi influence may have helped sales for those PBC shows.
The exodus of talent to Riyadh has resulted in a dead US scene where not all that much is happening and few big shows are taking place. Americans want to see shows at times that are convenient to them and with fighters who appeal to their consumer aesthetics.
PBC has been, almost literally, the only game in town for that.
And they can continue to fill that void, even as the Saudis double back, realizing their need for the US market, and start doing their own shows on American territory.
All they have to do is be consistent with their schedule and focus on putting together competitive bouts in divisions where they have enough talent to string together a series of meaningful fights that culminate in world titles. It would be a strategy similar to the one they employed around the welterweight division, when they began building their profile in the first place.
From lightweight to middleweight, there are fights to be made with business-friendly talent still loyal to the company. The junior middleweight division, specifically, offers them that opportunity.
Sebastian Fundora currently holds the WBC and WBO 154 lb. titles. Around him, there are several solid PBC-friendly contenders, such as Jesus Ramos, Keith Thurman, Tim Tszyu, Erickson Lubin, Yoenis Tellez, and, maybe one day, Jermell Charlo. There are plenty of other names in the division who could be brought aboard.
They don’t have to have the biggest fights, although they may end up outselling the Saudi shows, as they clearly do now. They just have to have good fights that mean something– on a consistent basis– and the stars will build themselves.
In this regard, losing Canelo Alvarez to Saudi Arabia could actually be a blessing in disguise for PBC.
With a reported guaranteed purse demand in the area of $40 million, plus PPV points and a sweeter-than-sweet general revenue split deal, there can’t be much money left for the company, at least relative to the size of the events and the effort needed to put everything together.
With the money needed to put through one Canelo card, they could fund a year’s worth of high quality shows that would keep fans engaged and the PBC name in the public eye. Pay-per-views with Gervonta Davis and David Benavidez could continue, with Davis-Roach II promising to be a bigger seller than the controversy-stained part I.
Speaking of pay-per-views, PBC also needs to appreciate that not everything has to be a pass-the-hat opportunity, even if doing so is the easiest path to keeping the lights on. There will be losses with a more active schedule, but the constant movement forward should force more wins in the long run.
Saturday’s show on Amazon Prime from Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas– which was clearly not a live gate success– served as a reminder that not everything has to be a blockbuster of earth-rattling importance.
Sometimes filler is good. Actually, in boxing, filler is sometimes essential to running a company built on parlaying buzz and intrigue into buys. Fundora, for example, will be a bit bigger (not literally– the kid is already 6-foot-6!) if they can get him back to the ring in May or June before taking on a better, more bankable challenge in the fall that could turn a significant profit for the company.
I’m not privy to any insider information, so I don’t know what Haymon’s books look like or what he may be facing that affects how he conducts business. But I do know momentum, public awareness, and good will matter when it comes to sales.
The reality is that there’s been more than a touch of Haymon Derangement Syndrome injected into the boxing main vein over the last few years. It came because an outsider with a different power dynamic and different ways of handling talent presumed to make waves in a very closed-off business. Promoters took offense and pushed their media lapdogs to attack, thereby tainting the narrative. It’s funny that the establishment’s failure to do the same with the outsider Saudis could eventually lead to all of them being put out to pasture. I guess the secret to acceptance was to just pay everyone off.
At its very worst, PBC is no worse than any of the other boxing companies. At its best, though, they’ve proven themselves to be the only big boxing operation consistently capable of making commercially successful major events. It’s no coincidence that something like 11 of the top 15 biggest revenue-generating boxing events of the last few years have been PBC events.
And, right now, with a full-on takeover of boxing being attempted and the American scene grinding to a near-halt because of it, you should be rooting for PBC.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com
