‘It Was Nothing Close To Nate Diaz-Jake Paul Buys’

Francis Ngannou’s biggest night of his career may not have been seen by as many eyeballs as he would have liked.

“The Predator” did the unthinkable against arguably the best Heavyweight boxer on Earth, Tyson Fury, this past weekend (Oct. 28, 2023). Putting up a competitive effort and fighting to a decision, Ngannou came up on the wrong end of a split judges’ call (watch highlights), but was the consensus biggest winner based on his effort and performance alone.

Ngannou is on top of the world after his boxing debut, looking at a world of new possibilities. However, the pay-per-view (PPV) buy rate for the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia event wasn’t so great, according to Dave Meltzer.

“I will have the exact numbers tomorrow, but they were terrible,” Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio (h/t @Fight_Ghost). “Way below an AEW (All Elite Wrestling) PPV. Possibly 10k for TV orders. I will have the streaming tomorrow. It was nothing close to [Saul] ‘Canelo’ [Alvarez] or [Nate] Diaz-[Jake] Paul buys.”

To look at the Paul vs. Diaz match up from August 2023, for comparison, that match did just over 450,000 PPV buys (h/t Bloody Elbow).

The Fury match was the first time competing in 2023 for each. For Ngannou, he’d been out of action since his final Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) appearance when he successfully defended his Heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane via unanimous decision at UFC 270 in January 2022 (watch highlights). Fury, on the other hand, previously scored a 10th round technical knockout against Derek Chisora in December 2022 (watch highlights).

Ngannou is already working on his next move in the boxing world as Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua are possibilities for his sophomore match. A Fury rematch is also on the table, but “The Gypsy King” will first have to get through Oleksandr Usyk in February 2022.