By Jake Donovan

There’s a chance that the May 9 edition of Premier Boxing Champions on CBS can improve its ratings, but early returns have the Saturday afternoon televised doubleheader pulling in a 0.9 overnight rating and roughly 1.4 million viewers, according to first-round numbers from Nielsen Media Research.

The overnight rating for the May 9 card from Hidalgo, Texas is slightly down from the April 4 premiere of PBC on CBS, which drew a 1.1 overnight rating and more than 1.6 million viewers on a busy Easter weekend. Adonis Stevenson topped the April 4 show, successfully defending his World light heavyweight championship with a 12-round win over Sakio Bika, in a bout sorely lacking sustained action.

From an entertainment standpoint, the May 9 edition was by far the best PBC card to date since the series first rolled out earlier this year.

Omar Figueroa—fighting mere miles from his Weslaco hometown—took a 12-round decision over Scotland’s Ricky Burns in a battle of former lightweight titlists, and one where many agreed the scores were much wider than the in-ring action indicated. The co-feature was a thriller, as England’s Jamie McDonnell rose from a 3rd round knockdown to edge previously unbeaten Tomoki Kameda over 12 rounds.

Previous PBC events have aired twice each on NBC and Spike TV. The NBC shows aired live in prime time on Saturday evenings, serving as the highest two rated boxing telecasts of 2015. The Spike TV cards aired on Friday evenings, providing mixed results.

The CBS shows will run on Saturday afternoons, a busy time for televised sports. Ratings were down on all networks from this point last year, although there still exists room for PBC’s rating—and all other sporting events from May 9, for that matter—to improve, as sports tend to track upward from original projections.

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of krikya360.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox