by David P. Greisman

The rematch between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Bryan Vera pulled in an audience on par with HBO’s most-watched boxing broadcasts of last year.

Chavez-Vera 2 did an average of 1,390,000 viewers, peaking at 1,531,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That’s similar to the number for Chavez-Vera 1, which last September pulled in an average of 1,416,000 viewers and peaked at 1,542,000.

Chavez-Vera 1 was HBO’s second-highest rating for 2013. The best was Miguel Cotto’s win over Delvin Rodriguez, which averaged 1,555,000 viewers and peaked at 1,706,000.

In third place last year was Gennady Golovkin’s win against Curtis Stevens, which averaged 1,410,000 viewers and peaked at 1,566,000. Fourth place was Adrien Broner’s win over Gavin Rees, which averaged 1,398,000 viewers and peaked at 1,551,000. And in fifth place was Adonis Stevenson’s win over Tony Bellew, which averaged 1,305,000 viewers and peaked at 1,358,000.

As for the televised undercard bout to Chavez-Vera 2, the bout between Orlando Salido and Vasyl Lomachenko pulled in an average of 1,017,000 viewers, which is 30 percent higher than Salido’s last HBO fight, a January 2013 loss to Mikey Garcia.

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