Arum not concerned with Pacquiao-Bradley matching the Mayweather-Cotto PPV numbers

By Boxing News - 05/23/2012 - Comments

Image: Arum not concerned with Pacquiao-Bradley matching the Mayweather-Cotto PPV numbersBy Chris Williams: For some reason Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is totally unconcerned with trying to match the whopping 1.5 million pay per view buys that the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto fight hauled earlier this month for his two Top Rank fighters Tim Bradley and Manny Pacquiao in their June 9th fight.

Arum said this: “We aim to get the biggest possible numbers that we can get. We operate a completely different model from Floyd’s model and whatever numbers he allegedly reached or didn’t reach is really not relevant to us. It varies from fight to fight.”

Interesting. I wonder why Arum wouldn’t be concerned with it has long lasting ramifications if Pacquiao isn’t able to draw similar numbers for his fight against Bradley. The reason it’s important is because it effects Pacquiao’s ability to negotiate a fight with Mayweather. If Pacquiao can’t get the same kinds of PPV numbers, then he can hardly ask for a 50-50 deal in splitting up the financial purse with Floyd.

Pacquiao would literally be laughed out of the negotiating room with Mayweather if he asked for an even split if Pacquiao can’t break 1 million buys for Bradley-Pacquiao. Even if he does get over a million, he still won’t be able to justify asking for a 50-50 deal if he doesn’t get at least 1.4 million buys. Those are respectable numbers given the opponent that Pacquiao is fighting. It’s not that Bradley isn’t a great fighter, it’s that he’s still not a household name like Cotto at this time.

So if Pacquiao can bring in big numbers in a fight against Bradley, it would suggest that Pacquiao is in the same league as Mayweather in bringing in fans. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening here. I think Pacquiao will be lucky if he can get 700,000 buys for this fight because this is one of the more obscure opponents that Pacquiao has fought since his fight with Joshua Clottey in 2010. Pacquiao brought in only 660,000 buys for that fight.



Comments are closed.