LA Times reports that shortly after the De La Hoya - Mayweather fight several videos of the match showed up on YouTube. The footage was quickly pulled, accompanied by a note stating that the video was "no longer available due to a copyright claim by Home Box Office Inc."
Copyright issues aside, what caught my attention was the following ...
"Interest, however, seemed to be somewhat tepid. Although the YouTube video that seemed to have been culled from a foreign feed drew several thousand hits, the relatively high-quality reproduction of HBO's broadcast drew, at best, a few hundred hits per round.
In contrast, a video clip purporting to be from the fight — which showed a scantily clad woman dancing to rap music with explicit language — drew nearly 200,000 hits."
The fight was, by most accounts, terribly boring [unfortunately I was one of the millions who spent $55 on the PPV]. Perhaps word of the less-than-exciting action has already spread? Perhaps people simply prefer scantily clad women and rap music to boxing? Who knows ...