The Showtime boxing year got off to a rousing start on Saturday night with Deontay Wilder’s entertaining decision win against Bermane Stiverne to win a heavyweight world title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Not only did Wilder become the first American to claim a heavyweight title since 2006, but he also showed that he has a chance to become a star based on the viewership for the fight.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the bout drew an average audience of 1.24 million viewers (with a peak of 1.34 million) to Showtime for its first major card of the year.

That blew away Showtime’s most-viewed fight in 2014, which was junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia’s controversial decision win against Mauricio Herrera, which averaged 972,000 viewers.

Wilder-Stiverne was not far off of last year’s most-viewed fight in the United States, which was the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Bryan Vera rematch. That fight averaged 1.39 million viewers on HBO, which is in around 7 million more homes than Showtime.

According to Showtime, the Wilder-Stiverne three-fight telecast was the highest-rated card on Showtime in more than two years. It drew the network’s second largest boxing audience since 2004 (when Nielsen began to separately measure the audiences on premium network multiplex channels), behind the Miguel Cotto-Austin Trout event from December 2012.

Last Saturday’s co-feature, junior featherweight titlist Leo Santa Cruz’s eighth-round knockout of Jesus Ruiz, averaged 912,000 viewers. The opener, junior welterweight prospect Amir Imam’s fifth-round knockout of Fidel Maldonado Jr., averaged 811,000 viewers.