by David P. Greisman

The highly enjoyable featherweight title fight in which Carl Frampton outpointed and unseated Leo Santa Cruz this past Saturday was watched by an estimated average of 480,000 people, according to a Nielsen ratings chart posted on Sports TV Ratings.

That included an average of 201,000 viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

The broadcast included two supporting bouts. Mikey Garcia’s stoppage of Elio Rojas averaged 427,000 viewers, while Tony Harrison’s technical knockout of Sergey Rabchenko averaged 299,000 viewers.

That makes Santa Cruz vs. Frampton the third most-watched “Showtime Championship Boxing” main event this year.

1. Deontay Wilder vs. Artur Szpilka, Jan. 16, average of 500,000 viewers (plus whatever number watched on top of that on the network’s free preview weekend)

2. Erislandy Lara vs. Vanes Martirosyan, May 21, average of 491,000 viewers

3. Leo Santa Cruz vs. Carl Frampton, July 30, average of 480,000 viewers

4. John Molina vs. Ruslan Provodnikov, June 11, average of 465,000 viewers

5. Badou Jack vs. Lucien Bute, April 30, average of 336,000 viewers

6. Julian Williams vs. Marcello Matano, March 5, Showtime Boxing Special Edition, average of 311,000 viewers

7. Gary Russell Jr. vs. Patrick Hyland, April 16, average of 295,000 viewers

8. Anthony Joshua vs. Dominic Breazeale, June 25, average of 289,000 viewers on what was an early “Showtime Broadcast International Live” broadcast from the U.K.

9. Leo Santa Cruz vs. Kiko Martinez, Feb. 27, average of 267,000 viewers

Santa Cruz-Frampton produced much larger viewership than Santa Cruz’s previous fight on the network, which was on the same night as Terence Crawford’s HBO bout against Hank Lundy.

The “PBC on Spike” broadcast on Friday did higher numbers than the Showtime card on Saturday. While no individual data was listed for the main event — Adonis Stevenson’s knockout of Thomas Williams Jr. — the entire broadcast averaged 531,000 viewers between 9 and 11:09 p.m. Eastern Time.

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com