By Lem Satterfield

Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum is very happy with the early buyrate figures for last Saturday's Showtime pay per view, which featured Miguel Cotto defending his WBA junior middleweight title against Ricardo Mayorga at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Cotto stopped Mayorga in the twelfth round to retain his 154-pound title. Arum has yet to obtain the full count, but he anticipates the generated buyrate figure to fall around 250,000, or possibly a bit more.

"It's really done very well. We don't have all of the numbers. We only have early numbers. But right now, we're where it looks like we did well over 200,000 or somewhere near 250,000. Maybe above 250,000 or it could be just below 250,000. We only have certain numbers. We have the Puerto Rican pay per view numbers, which are unbelievable. They're off the charts," Arum said to krikya360.com.

"We have the satellite dishes, which did very well. But we don't have the telephone companies, AT&T and Verizon. We don't have a lot of the Eastern pay per view. We don't have the New York pay per view. We don't have enough to really zero in on a number. But we know that we'll be well over 200,000 and we should be around 250,000."

Reaching a good buyrate number wasn't easy, considered the fact that Cotto-Mayorga was going up against a live HBO show, featuring a middleweight doubleheader with Sergio Martinez vs. Sergiy Dzinziruk and Andy Lee vs. Craig McEwan.

"There was some intrepdation. It wasn't easy being up against a live HBO show. That certainly didn't help. But, we had, first of all, Don King, who was magnificent during all of the promotion. And Don King and I were a great act. And Ricardo Mayorga, as you know, is Mayorga, and he brings a lot of attention to the promotion and the show," Arum said.

"And even though Christy Martin fell off because of her injury, we were lucky enough to have Tom Zibikowski, and he brought a lot of attention to the show. So, all in all, it worked. It worked. And we're very, very pleased. That was a very, very strong number that we did."

"Going in, we had a lot of trepidation, again, because we were going up against a live HBO show, and there were a lot of things going on, and I'm happy to say that we did very, very well."