Mayweather: Pacquiao’s not on my level

By Boxing News - 12/18/2013 - Comments

floyd56554By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. is amused when he hears some boxing fans saying that Manny Pacquiao is on the same level as him. Mayweather doesn’t see Pacquiao as being anywhere close to where he is both in talent and in the pay-per-view sector.

Mayweather’s an undefeated fighter in his 17-year pro career, and he also has the all-time pay-per-view record with 2.2 million buys for his fight against Oscar De La Hoya back in 2007. Mayweather’s fight last September against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez hit 2 million buys, narrowly missing the all-time record. Pacquiao’s recent fight against Brandon Rios drew less than 500,000 PPV buys.

“When you get guys that are saying that Pacquiao is on the same level as Mayweather, I say well, in my eyes that’s not true,” Floyd said to Fighthype. “I didn’t need a Nike check on my back…My PPV numbers are still the greatest of anyone in the sport.”

Mayweather is right. His PPV numbers are number 1 of all time in the boxing industry, and for Pacquiao to break Mayweather’s record or even get close to to his numbers, it’s going to take some skillful match-making on the part of his promoter Bob Arum. Honestly, I don’t see how Pacquiao can ever become as big as Mayweather, not with Pacquiao being matched up against guys like Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley, Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez. Pacquiao needs to be matched up with guys like Mayweather, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and little Mayweather, Adrien Broner for him to get the big PPV numbers.

Since I don’t see Arum even taking a stab at making any of those fights, then Pacquiao is probably going to be stuck with PPV numbers well below Mayweather for the remainder of his career. I don’t think Pacquiao will ever hit 1 million buys again, I really don’t. Arum doesn’t have the guys for Pacquiao to fight in his Top Rank stable, and having him fight the same fighters over and over is recipe for failure. Pacquiao needs to stand up and tell Arum who he wants to fight instead of being limited to fighting the same guys all the time.



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