By Chris Williams: If the Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) vs. WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) fight does get made for September 14th, it’s going to be awfully tough sell for Bob Arum to make this fight a pay-per-view bout.
Dan Rafael of ESPN sees it as a fight that at best would generate possibly 250,000 to 300,000 PPV buys.
Would that be enough to make the fight worthwhile? I kind of doubt the fight would generate even that many buys because if Arum is really intent on putting it on that date he’s going to find himself competing with Floyd Mayweather Jr. because he plans on fighting on that date as well.
I know Arum said recently that boxing fans don’t have any problems with watching two fights on competing networks because they would simply Tivo one of the fights and watch it later, but I think he’s dead wrong. It will hurt both fights if he puts Bradley-Marquez on the same date as a Mayweather fight, and I don’t think as many people use Tivo as Arum thinks.
I don’t use it and I don’t personally know anyone that does. It would also mean that boxing fans would have to pay for two PPV fights on the same night. I don’t see that happening unless they’ve got a lot of cash to spend on purchasing two PPV fights.
Given a choice between a Mayweather bout and a fight between Marquez and Bradley, and I think boxing fans will select the Mayweather fight at a much higher rate.
The Marquez vs. Bradley fight still isn’t signed, and there’s no telling if Arum will decide to make it a PPV bout or not, but I kind of think he’d have to because both guys will likely wind up with just $1 million each if they fight on regular HBO, and I have a feeling that they’ll want to make more than this.
That means it’ll have to be PPV, and if it’s on the same night as Mayweather’s fight then I have a feeling we could see PPV numbers below 100,000.
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