HBO is not worried about the Aug. 26 Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight undercutting what it hopes will be a blockbuster on Saturday, Sept. 16, featuring middleweight champions Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin.

HBO pay-per-view vice president Tony Walker told Multichannel News that Mayweather-McGregor was more of an event, whereas Alvarez-Golovkin should appeal more to traditional boxing fans. HBO even hopes to piggyback on the Mayweather-McGregor hype, having marketed its event during the run-up to that Aug. 26 bout, in which boxer Mayweather defeated mixed-martial-arts specialist McGregor.

“There’s some distance between the two fights,” Walker said. “I fully expect a lot of people who purchased [Mayweather- McGregor] to come back and buy [Alvarez- Golovkin] on Sept. 16.”

In addition to the hard-core boxing crowd, more Hispanic viewers are expected to buy the HBO fight, due to Alvarez’s popularity among those viewers. Walker said the Aug. 26 premiere of HBO’s 24/7 Canelo-Golovkin preview show drew an impressive 350,000 viewers despite going directly up against the Mayweather-McGregor PPV event.

HBO will run promotional spots for the fight during high-profile sports events like National Football League, Major League Baseball and college football games.

Walker would not project how many PPV buys HBO expects to generate from Alvarez-Golovkin, but said he thinks it could surpass Alvarez’s best PPV performance. Alvarez’s May 6 fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. generated 1 million buys, according to fight promoter Golden Boy Promotions.

Four marquee boxing and UFC pay-per- view events over the next two months could salvage what has been an otherwise weak year for the category.

After generating more than $500 million in revenue last year — some $400 million from just the May 2, 2015 Floyd Mayweather- Manny Pacquiao welterweight title fight — the live PPV-event category has garnered less than half of that take through the first 10 months of 2016, industry sources said.

Distributors hope a flurry of big PPV events in November and December will help pad the category’s revenue take. The latest addition to the PPV category is the Dec. 30 return of UFC star Ronda Rousey to the octagon, more than a year after her shocking loss to Holly Holm in last November’s UFC 193.

UFC CARRYING THE LOAD

The show joins UFC’s Nov. 12 PPV event from New York’s Madison Square Garden, which will feature popular UFC fighter Conor McGregor. In Demand senior vice president of programming and business development Mark Boccardi said that the appearance of Rousey and McGregor in two of the final three UFC PPV events -- the MMA outfit will also distribute its UFC 206 event on Dec. 10 -- will cap off what has been one of the most lucrative years for the UFC in terms of PPV revenue, although he would not disclose specifics.

“Clearly, this is a year where the UFC is helping the entire category,” Boccardi said. “Everyone sees that boxing is down — we had no Mayweather and one Pacquaio fight so far [this past April against Timothy Bradley Jr.] — so the UFC’s really strong performance is good for the overall health of the business. The events feature two tentpole athletes for PPV in Rousey and McGregor — the two are by far the biggest UFC PPV stars — and the crossover appeal that Ronda has you can’t overstate.”

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Two high-profile PPV boxing events will also take place within two weeks of each other in November. This Saturday ([Nov. 5) Pacquiao will step into the PPV ring for a fight against WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas, while Nov. 19 will pit Sergey Kovalev against Andre Ward in a battle of undefeated light heavyweight boxers.

Boxing promotion company Top Rank, which is distributing the Pacquiao-Vargas fight, isn’t concerned about cannibalization, given the back-to-back-to-back marquee PPV events, company president Todd duBoef said.

DAILY DOC SERIES KICKS OFF

Top Rank recently turned to the Web to promote the fight. The network last week launched ALL IN: Pacquiao-Vargas, a daily documentary series on Top Rank’s Facebook page and Twitter feed that it said will give boxing fans an inside look at each fighter’s daily preparations.

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HBO will push the lion’s share of its promotional efforts for the Kovalev-Ward fight to the week before the event in an effort to avoid the marketing noise from the Pacquiao-Vargas and UFC 205 events. While there is a concern about potential cannibalization of viewers, HBO vice president of programming Tony Walker said the network is confident its event would appeal to boxing fans looking for a competitive matchup between undefeated fighters.

“There are some [cannibalization] concerns, but we think our fight is of a quality that will make people watch it,” Walker said.

What a difference a year makes.

This time last year, cable operators were still counting the windfall from the May 2, 2015, Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view fight, which generated a record 4 million buys and more than $400 million in revenue.

Fast forward to today, and the category is preparing for HBO’s July 23 PPV event between undefeated welterweight champion Terence Crawford and undefeated contender Viktor Postol -- with far fewer performance expectations.

In fact, the combined revenue and buy take of the category’s two fights so far this year — HBO’s April Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley Jr. Fight and its May Canelo Alvarez-Amir Kahn fight — along with next Saturday’s fight won’t even come within a jab’s length of Mayweather-Pacquiao’s performance.

Still, with Pacquiao and Mayweather virtually out of the picture in retirement, HBO said it’s using this year’s PPV telecasts to nurture the next generation of PPV fighters, in the hopes that a few will break through and serve as the industry’s next big cash cow.

“When a promoter identifies a talented fighter and decides to build him up, at some point they have to throw them into the deep waters to see whether they have the thing that they could sell,” HBO vice president, programming, PPV, Tony Walker said. “Crawford is talented, he has an edge to him, and in the fight he’s going up against a fighter that is equally as skilled. Good competitive fights always sell, and it comes during a time where there’s not a lot of competition in the marketplace.”

Crawford has never headlined a PPV card, so it’s not surprising that Walker would not reveal projections for the PPV event. He added that HBO and fight promotion company Top Rank want to gauge Crawford’s appeal on the big stage.

“Manny Pacquiao didn’t generate a million buys in his first PPV event, so we’re going to see how it performs,” Walker said. “We’re optimistic — I don’t know a number, but I know that we and Arum are pretty enthusiastic.”

The industry has stepped up marketing efforts for the fight, committing to the traditional outlay of promotional spots, social-media promotion and other marketing tactics typical of marquee PPV events. With few PPV boxing cards on the slate, Walker said the industry is looking to maximize the revenue return from every fight that’s offered.

“All of the distributors are running cross-channel spots, digital ads and electronic program guide ads, as well as showing past fights featuring the fighters,” Walker said. “There is a lot of marketing around the show.”

While there aren’t any big PPV fights scheduled beyond Crawford-Postol, there maybe a silver lining for the PPV boxing category this fall. Published reports last week quoted boxing promoter Bob Arum as saying that Pacquiao will return to the ring then, just months after announcing his retirement following the Bradley fight.

Walker and HBO could not confirm a potential fall Pacquiao fight, but any in-ring appearance by the PPV category’s former pound-for-pound champion would provide a major revenue boost to the category, regardless of his opponent.

Pacquiao has generated the second-highest level of PPV revenue within the boxing category, behind only Mayweather.