AFTER the window of opportunity to fight former champion Wladimir Klitchko closed, Anthony Joshua will now defend his IBF title against unheralded American Eric Molina. It will still be a pay-per-view on Sky Sports Box Office, with no variation in the ยฃ16.99 price per buy, it could be a hard sell. Molina is not an appealing replacement for Klitschko so the success of this show will be driven by Anthony Joshuaโs star power alone. But promoter Eddie Hearn is confident that this bill could do over 300,000 buys.
โIf itโs a smaller main event you get a much bigger undercard. If itโs a big main event like Klitschko, youโll get a much smaller undercard. So thatโs the logic there. The logic is can this fight or show happen without Box Office? Absolutely not. The other argument of why doesnโt Anthony Joshua take much less money. [Paying market value] thatโs what youโre doing. As always weโll put the show together. You have the option to buy it. I believe youโre going to get great value for money. I believe itโs going to be a great show. If itโs not, Iโm sure youโll tell us and I guess weโll be judged on December 11. But it went on pre-sale today [Thursday], sold out in 11 minutes. Itโll go on general sale [Friday], so what does it tell you? It tells you heโs a huge star and people are desperate to watch him,โ Hearn said.
Ticket sales are an indicator for how a fight will do on pay-per-view. โThe only thing that will change is how many it will do,โ he continued. โLook 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 wonโt but weโre talking about that fight doing circa 400,000 buys, itโs a lot of buys. People keep talking โoh, Joshuaโs numbers are fallingโ. Theyโre not. Theyโre not at the gate, theyโre 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. Donโt forget Quigg-Frampton was significantly lower, Froch-Kessler was significantly lower. Itโs only because weโve 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 thatโs 250 [000].โ