Mayweather vs. Guerrero fight still not sold out for MGM Grand

By Boxing News - 04/29/2013 - Comments

Floyd MayweatherBy Allan Fox: For some reason boxing fans haven’t scooped up the tickets for this Saturday’s fight between WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KO’s) and Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (31-1-1, 18 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The fight still isn’t sold out for the 16,800 seat MGM Grand, and that makes you wonder if Mayweather is losing his ticket selling magic. It obviously doesn’t help Mayweather one bit that he selected an opponent in Guerrero who doesn’t have a big fan base.

Guerrero is popular in Gilroy and San Jose, California, but he’s an unknown in the rest of California and the United States when it comes to casual boxing fans.

Mayweather took a big gamble in choosing to hold onto his worthless WBC 147 pound strap to defend it against Guerrero because Mayweather is betting that Mexican boxing fans will gladly purchase the fight on Showtime pay-per-view because of Guerrero having Mexican blood him. However, Guerrero isn’t Mexican; he’s an American and not a popular fighter. It could be that Mayweather made a big mistake in assuming that the Mexican fans would help make this fight a success.

With the huge $200 million, 6-fight contract that Mayweather signed with Showtime/CBS, it’s taken away a lot of the marketing drive that Mayweather previously had for his PPV fights. In the past, Mayweather would work hard in making himself accessible for interview to help sell his PPV fights, but with him getting the huge guaranteed money, Mayweather has left the marketing up to the All Access episodes and Guerrero, and I think that’s going to prove to be a big disappointment this Saturday night.

Mayweather really needed to go the extra mile to sell this fight because his opponent Guerrero wasn’t someone that he could count on to attract fans to the fight. It’s like Mayweather is fighting an unknown like Tim Bradley before he faced Manny Pacquiao.

Guerrero may not be able to bring more than a trickle of fans because he’s been in less than popular divisions most of his career after featherweight, super featherweight and lightweight. He didn’t move up to welterweight until last year and he didn’t look good in beating Selcuk Aydin and Andre Berto.

Guerrero may have won a decisive 12 round decision over Berto, but he made it really ugly to watch with his holding and hitting other such fouls. It wasn’t like watching Erik Morales or Marco Antonio Barrera fight it out.

If Mayweather wants to make Showtime happy, he’s going to need to be a lot more careful in selecting his opponents for the remainder of his 6-fight contract. The money be guaranteed, but if Mayweather wants to ensure that he receives another big contract from Showtime after this one is finished, he’s going to need to give them good value for their money by choosing the best opponents. Mayweather is going to need to fight the likes of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Amir Khan, Danny Garcia, Zab Judah and maybe Sergio Martinez.



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