Canelo Alvarez Dominates John Ryder in PPV Boxing Event

By R. Thomas Umstead
published

Devin Haney-Vasiliy Lomachenko up next in May 20 PPV bout

DAZN's Alvarez-Ryder
Canelo Alvarez retained his title with a unanimous decision against John Ryder. (Image credit: DAZN)

Canelo Alvarez retained his undisputed super middleweight championship Saturday in a unanimous decision win against John Ryder. Time will tell whether the fight will continue to cement Alvarez’s unofficial title as the pound-for-pound pay-per-view boxing champion.

While it’s too early to determine PPV buys for the DAZN-distributed fight, Alvarez-Ryder was expected to be one of the higher-performing events in an already busy 2023 PPV schedule that has featured four other PPV events. Alvarez has been the category's most PPV draw, having averaged more than 600,000 PPV buys in his last three PPV fights since 2021.

Showtime’s April 22 Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia fight has set the high performance bar for the category so far in 2023, averaging a reported 1.2 million PPV buys.

Next up for the PPV boxing category is ESPN Plus’s May 20 undisputed lightweight championship bout between champion Devin Haney and former champion Vasiliy Lomachenko.

R. Thomas Umstead
R. Thomas Umstead

R. Thomas Umstead serves as senior content producer, programming for Multichannel News, Broadcasting + Cable and Next TV. During his more than 30-year career as a print and online journalist, Umstead has written articles on a variety of subjects ranging from TV technology, marketing and sports production to content distribution and development. He has provided expert commentary on television issues and trends for such TV, print, radio and streaming outlets as Fox News, CNBC, the Today show, USA Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio. Umstead has also filmed, produced and edited more than 100 original video interviews, profiles and news reports featuring key cable television executives as well as entertainers and celebrity personalities.