Despite facing heavy competition from the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight, HBO's broadcast of Miguel Cotto vs. Yoshihiro Kamegai brought a decent viewership.
According to Showbuzz Daily, per Nielsen Media Records, Cotto vs. Kamegai averaged 730,000 viewers, peaking at 805,000 viewers for the HBO broadcast. Cotto won the vacant WBO junior middleweight title with a unanimous decision over Kamegai.
Cotto, a proven pay-per-view draw for HBO, fought on television for the first time in more than two years, last appearing in early June when he retained his middleweight world title with a fourth-round TKO win over Daniel Geale. That 2015 fight drew an average viewership of 1.589 million viewers, peaking at 1.621 million.
The opening fight, featuring WBC super bantamweight champion Rey Vargas’ unanimous decision win against challenger Ronny Rios, averaged 524,000 viewers and peaked at 687,000 viewers.
Cotto has stated that 2017 is his last year as a boxer and does want one more match by the end of the year. Cotto and trainer Freddie Roach said they want to face the winner of the Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight while there is a rumor that Cotto might be facing former middleweight champion David Lemieux in New York in December on HBO.
The August 26 HBO Boxing broadcast was not the worst in terms of viewership for the network this year, despite stiff competition from the Showtime pay-per-view. An HBO Boxing card back on July 15 only drew about 683,000 viewers and peaked at 729,000 viewers.
