On the face of it, Anthony Joshua's heavyweight title scrap with Wladimir Klitschko had everything.
The new kid on the block. The all-time great. Knockdowns, suspense, and compelling exchanges. The iconic, head-snapping shot. And all on one of world sport's grandest stages in London.
Such has been the dearth of quality heavyweight world title contests since the days of Lewis, Holyfield and Tyson, Saturday's bout at Wembley has correctly been labelled one of the finest of the modern era. Remarkably, those of us of a certain age - this writer included - had never seen such an enthralling back-and-forth for what was once the most prestigious honour in world sport, but has since faded to relative irrelevance.
But as predicted, Anthony Joshua's emergence has restored heavyweight boxing to public consciousness, and the numbers from Saturday night certainly back this up.
Joshua Klitschko PPV numbers
Eddie Hearn has revealed to the BBC that the fight was purchased over 1.5 million times in the UK alone - a British record, and roughly 1.2 million higher than Joshua's last three Sky Sports Box Office fights.
Add to this the viewership in Germany, where Klitschko is a bona fide superstar; 10.4 million people total watched his comeback fight on Deutsch network RTL.
On Poland's leading tv channel Polsat, the average viewership for the scrap was 920,000.
In the States, where Showtime and HBO did battle to broadcast the fight live, both networks benefited from their arrangement.
Showtime, who have broadcast Joshua's last three bouts to an average of about 350,000 viewers, almost doubled that average, with the incredible fifth and sixth rounds pulling in 687,000 viewers. Their overall average of 659,000 is reportedly the largest audience Showtime have ever received for a live afternoon airing.
Their nemeses at HBO broadcast the fight on replay later that night and averaged a whopping 738,000 viewers.
In terms of purses, both Joshua and Klitschko are understood to have earned a cool £15m each, and could stand to make even more should they decide to rematch.
