So who won the battle of the two fight cards on Saturday in Las Vegas -- HBO’s tripleheader at the Cosmopolitan headlined by the Timothy Bradley Jr.-Diego Chaves draw (terrible decision) or Showtime’s quadrupleheader at the MGM Grand headlined by Amir Khan’s brilliant near-shutout performance of Devon Alexander?

Based on the viewership figures, it seems to me that it is basically a draw. While both did OK neither set the world on fire in their respective viewership universe. It is my opinion that the fact that most of the shows went head-to-head hurt both of them.

The main events, both in the welterweight division, were essentially on opposite each other and, according to Nielsen Media Research, Bradley-Chaves averaged 966,000 viewers for the live, first-time airing, peaking at 1.087 million. Bradley-Chaves was the 15th most-watched fight on American television this year. HBO has televised the top 13 and 14 of the top 15 while the only Showtime fight in the top 15 is No. 14, Danny Garcia-Mauricio Herrera from March.

Keeping in mind, of course, that HBO is in several million more homes than Showtime, it is no surprise that Bradley-Chaves had more viewers than Khan-Alexander, which averaged 762,000 viewers and peaked at 887,000. But Khan-Alexander’s average placed it sixth out of Showtime’s 13 “Showtime Championship Boxing” telecasts this year. Not bad, but not great. Without Bradley-Chaves on opposite it, it seems logical to think Khan-Alexander would have drawn far more viewers given the name recognition of both fighters.

The HBO opener, junior welterweight Jose Benavidez Jr.’s absolute gift decision against Herrera, averaged 807,000 viewers, peaking at 905,000. The co-feature, Andy Lee’s big sixth-round knockout of Matt Korobov to win a middleweight title averaged 787,000 viewers and peaked at 849,000 viewers.

Over on Showtime, the co-feature of welterweight Keith Thurman’s shutout of Leonard Bundu averaged 650,000 viewers, featherweight Abner Mares’s fifth-round stoppage of Jose Ramirez averaged 566,000 viewers and junior middleweight Jermall Charlo’s third-round knockout of Lenny Bottai averaged 451,000 viewers.

So both cards saw their audiences grow throughout the night -- a good thing -- but neither drew numbers all that great.

Showtime was pleased that the overall viewership for the four-fight event was on par with its “Showtime Championship Boxing” average for 2014.

HBO is pleased that it had a 44 percent viewership advantage for its event over Showtime’s for the night, even if the Bradley-Chaves main event was down about 13 percent from the average for HBO’s “World Championship Boxing” main events in 2014.

In the end fans got a good night of fights but would have been better served it seems had the cards not competed head to head in a sport that is already too marginalized to have major events against one another.