Terence Crawford's historic junior welterweight win over Julius Indongo resulted in the second-highest viewership for a boxing match on cable in 2017.
According to ESPN's Dan Rafael, Crawford vs. Indongo from August 19, which was the third in ESPN's Top Rank Boxing series, averaged 1.2 million viewers. That is the second-highest ESPN boxing card in 2017, behind Jeff Horn's upset win over Manny Pacquiao in early July to win the WBO welterweight title. That fight did about 3.1 million viewers across all ESPN networks, peaking at 4.4 million viewers.
The Crawford vs. Indongo fight was also a huge increase in viewership from the network's last Top Rank card: Vasyl Lokmachenko vs. Miguel Marriaga on August 5. That fight only did 728,000 viewers, which means the Crawford fight had a 39 percent increase in viewership.
Although the August 19 card was second on ESPN's boxing viewership, it was the fifth-highest viewed boxing card of the year in the United States. Keith Thurman vs. Danny Garcia in a welterweight unification fight was the highest-viewed boxing fight with 3.74 million viewers, peaking at 5.1 million viewers.
Crawford defeated Indongo by third-round KO to become the first man to hold the WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF junior welterweight titles at the same time. On that ESPN card, Oleksandr Gvozdyk defeated Craig Baker by sixth-round TKO to retain the NABO and NABF Light Heavyweight Title and prospect Shakur Stevenson defeated David Paz.
The next Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card takes place on September 22 headlined by Oscar Valdez's WBO featherweight title defense over Genesis Servania.
