Hugo Luis vs Koki Kameda - 20.5 million viewers The pre fight show earlier that week scored 11 million viewers
Interesting thing I noticed here is that for the first time the ratings website I get this off have boxing listed among the top five sports in japan: baseball, Soccer, Marathon, golf, boxing. Basically boxing has received enough overall viewers to be set apart from the herd.
top ten boxing matches in Japanese history Keep in mind there are more channels today so it's harder to reach numbers like in the 1980s and what not. Gushiken vs Rios 43 million Koki vs Naito 43 million Koki vs Randaeta 42 million Golden Dragon High-hyun vs Gushiken 41 million Tatsuyoshi vs Yakushiji 39 million Tyson vs Douglas 38 million Gushiken vs Vargas 38 million Flores vs Gushiken 36 million All Kameda bros card 33 million Barukasu vs Gushiken 32 million
One of the Kameda Bros fight got 60 million and Fighting Hirada had a lot of fights in the 40-60 range which is incredible when you consider he was fighting in the 1960s when Japan had a smaller population
I thought the most watched fight ever in Japan was Sapp/Akebono K-1 with over 54 million viewers edit: Nevermind Kameda beat it by 1% higher
The most watched fight's ever all involved Fighting Harada. Though he's omitted from the top ten boxing list I posted his fights are littered all over Japan's most watched programmes ever. When I think about it now the ratings are probably much higher than 20 million for this fight. If the other ratings are higher too then it's probably closer to 30 million.
The top 50 most watched Japanese shows only go down to 49%. http://www.videor.co.jp/data/ratedata/all50.htm If I recall MMA media reported higher ratings than that for K1 and Pride. I guess those were back in the days they could fabricate huge TV ratings in foreign countries because people didn't know how to check on them. Yeah back then ... oh wait.
THis guy couldve done well too. Too bad he quit. Ryota Murata, 2012 gold medalist from Japan and Japan's first gold medalist since 1960, rejected a $1million deal to turn pro, says hes done with boxing http://www.boxingscene.com/ryota-murata-rejects-million-dollar-deal-turn-pro--56431