By Keith Idec

Saturday was a strong night for boxing programming on basic cable, too.

Matched head-to-head with an HBO doubleheader on premium cable, the Premier Boxing Champions doubleheader on FS1 peaked at 580,000 viewers and drew an average audience of 364,000, according to information from Nielsen Media Research. Those were the highest ratings for a PBC on FS1 show to date.

The doubleheader featured emerging super middleweight contender David Benavidez, who knocked out Rogelio Medina in the eighth round of a scheduled 12-rounder in Laredo, Texas. The show peaked at 580,000 viewers during the opening bout, in which undefeated featherweight contender Jorge Lara (29-0-2, 21 KOs) stopped fellow Mexican Mario Briones (28-6-2, 21 KOs) in the third round at Laredo Energy Arena.

The 20-year-old Benavidez, of Phoenix, dropped Mexico’s Medina (37-8, 31 KOs) once apiece in the sixth, seventh and eighth rounds before their fight was stopped. Benavidez improved to 18-0 and recorded his 17th knockout.

The PBC on FS1 doubleheader aired almost entirely at the same time HBO televised a live doubleheader from Madison Square Garden in New York. PBC’s telecast on FS1 began at 10 p.m. ET, 15 minutes prior to the start of HBO’s doubleheader.

The peak audience for the main event of that show, Terence Crawford’s terrific performance in an eventual technical knockout of Felix Diaz, drew the highest rating for a boxing match on either premium or basic cable television in 2017. A peak audience of 1.036 million watched at least part of Crawford’s defense of his WBC and WBO super lightweight championships against Diaz.

The Crawford-Diaz bout averaged 961,000 viewers, which means more than 1.3 million combined viewers were watching boxing on HBO and FS1 at the same time Saturday night.

The opener of HBO’s “World Championship Boxing” doubleheader also drew respectable ratings Saturday night. Ray Beltran’s spectacular second-round knockout of Jonathan Maicelo produced a peak viewership of 723,000 and averaged 687,000 viewers.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.