American fighters in Europe have a bad reputation as being ****y and are disliked. Hopkins is the worst. RJJ comes in second.
It's the reason why the FBI top ten wanted internet pirates are always Ukraine/Russians. Used to be a huge site called demonoid that got raided. It was in the Ukraine.
Don't delude yourself. Hopkins is watched in Europe at 10x the number of Vlad, Sturm or Stiegilitz fights.
This is why all the largest pirate torrent sites are located in Europe. :yep Hours after the fights these European torrent sites are flooded with all the major Showtime/HBO PPVs and the download numbers are far greater than what ESPN/Showtime/HBO release. Europe, not Asia is the largest consumers of pirated media material. :yep
the fact that ESPN didn't even pick up the fight or even start to promote it until 1 week before the fight didn't help the numbers
Show me the torrent download numbers of Hopkins Shumenov compared some some of Wlad's fights deal:deal Can't wait you little lying *****. Also you fail to realize that it doesn't really matter where the torrent site is located -- what matters is where downloaders are located. You assume just because a torrent site is in Ukraine most downloaders are. That of course is a fallacy.
Hopkins is boring as hell, hasn't scored a knockout in a decade... He gets better ratings ONLY because he's American, not because Wlad is boring. Wlad is a far more exciting than Hopkins, Ward etc. But Americans don't give a damn about him because he isn't one of us, It's the exact opposite in Germany....
If Wlad charged for PPV it would still sell in Europe, and he could choose Americans as voluntaries so he could get decent numbers in the states...