Promoter Eddie Hearn is predicting a solid pay-per-view buyrate for Anthony Joshua's clash with Eric Molina on December 10.
Speaking about the upcoming fight for Joshua's vacant IBF heavyweight title, Hearn said that based on pre-sale numbers and how other title fights have fared on pay-per-view, he expects the fight to draw at least 300,000 buys.
"I believe it’s going to be a great show," Hearn said. "If it’s not, I’m sure you’ll tell us and I guess we’ll be judged on December 11. But it went on pre-sale, and sold out in 11 minutes. So what does it tell you? It tells you he’s a huge star and people are desperate to watch him. The only thing that will change is how many it will do. Look at [Dominic] Breazeale. I think Molina is a better fight than Breazeale and I think this is a stronger card. So if you apply that mathematics to it, it should do the same or more. It probably won’t but we’re talking about that fight doing circa 400,000 buys, it’s a lot of buys. People keep talking ‘oh, Joshua’s numbers are falling’. They’re not. They’re not at the gate, they’re not at the Box Office. People will make their mind up. I think this will be somewhere between 300 and 400,000 buys. Maybe it won’t be. Don’t forget Quigg-Frampton was significantly lower, Froch-Kessler was significantly lower. It’s only because we’ve been blessed with pay per views over the last two years that have been four, five, six [hundred thousand], a million and then the odd one that’s 250,000.”
Molina is stepping in as a replacement for Wladimir Klitschko, who was set to face Joshua next month. Klitschko got hurt a few weeks back and will now fight Joshua for both the IBF and WBA heavyweight titles next spring, should Joshua retain his belt.
