By Chris Williams: Depending on how well his September 14th fight against WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez does on pay per view, unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. could stand to make $50 million if the total PPV buys reach 1.6 million, according to Forbes.com.
Mayweather’s biggest payday of his career was his $45 million he received last year against Miguel Cotto. That fight drew 1.5 million buys with Canelo fighting on the undercard. The September 14th fight promises to be above the 1.5 million that Mayweather-Cotto brought in. How much more is unclear.
However, it’s doubtful that the Mayweather-Canelo fight will break the PPV record set by Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 because Canelo is not De La Hoya in terms of popularity in the United States. Indeed, he’s just now starting to get known in the U.S and he’s not yet established anything close to what De La Hoya had with his crossover popularity.
De La Hoya had a lot more years behind him in building a fan base in the U.S at the time he fought Mayweather. He was former Olympic Gold medalist for the U.S and he had been fighting on HBO for years. Canelo didn’t have much of an amateur career in Mexico and he certainly wasn’t an Olympic Gold medalist like De La Hoya.
I think the Mayweather-Canelo fight will bring in at least 1.6 million PPV buys, but not much more than that. It’s just too bad Mayweather isn’t young enough to wait until Canelo gets really popular before fighting him because if he had another five years this would be a huge fight.
Canelo is really lucky to be still unbeaten after struggling to defeat Austin Trout last month. That was a close, close fight. Canelo did not look good.
According to Fightnews.com, Canelo could make between $10-12 million for the Mayweather fight. Those are very good numbers for a 22-year-old fighter like Canelo.
When Mayweather was 22, he wasn’t getting anything near that and he was clearly a better fighter than Canelo is now. Mayweather didn’t have a built in fan base like Canelo has from his Mexican fans.
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