By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley wants a bigger payday in his rematch with Manny Pacquiao than he did in their fight two years ago in June 2012. Bradley received a $5 million guarantee in that fight, and he made more with the pay-per-view upside after the fight hauled in close to 900,000 PPV buys. But, Bradley is now reportedly asking for $8 million for the rematch with Pacquiao, says Steve Kim, and that’s not likely to happen given Pacquiao’s recent drop off in PPV numbers with his bout against Brandon Rios.
Sure, Bradley can ask for more money this time, and I’m sure he deserves it. But can Bob Arum of Top Rank guarantee that the Pacquiao-Bradley II rematch will bring in more than 475,000 PPV buys? If it only brings in that much, then Top Rank will likely take a loss if they give Bradley $8 million and Pacquiao $20+ million. Those aren’t enough guys to pay both Pacquiao and Bradley big bank.
Both guys are going to need to take a big pay cut for this fight to happen, because you can’t guarantee that 900,000 to 1 million people are going to want to see Pacquiao and Bradley fight for a second time. Before the Bradley fight, Pacquiao had been hitting over 1 million buys almost every time out since his fight with Oscar De La Hoya, with the exception of Pacquiao’s fight against Joshua Clottey in 2010. That was a really stupid idea for Arum to match Pacquiao against his then Top Rank stable fighter Clottey.
With Pacquiao’s PPV numbers dropping off in his last fight and with him having lost twice in his last three fights, Bradley will need to likely come down below $5 million, what he got in 2012, for the fight to get made. It’s too risky for Arum to give Bradley an $8 million guarantee if there’s no way of knowing whether boxing fans are interested in seeing Pacquiao fight Bradley again. I think fans do want to see the fight again, but on regular HBO, not on PPV. I personally couldn’t conceive of having to pay to see Pacquiao fight Bradley a second time, because their fight in 2012 was so incredibly dull to watch. An exciting fight, it was not.
Even if Arum discounted the Pacquio-Bradley II fight to the $5 range, I wouldn’t be interested. It’s too much for a fight between two guys that I don’t feel will make for a good product. With their first fight being so bad, Arum should be making this a complimentary fight for free on regular HBO. If you got to a restaurant and get bad food, you don’t want to go back and buy some of the same food, do you? Even if that restaurant sold the food at a discount the second time around, I don’t think the diners would be interested.
Arum’s making a mistake in putting this rematch together, and he’ll be making an even bigger mistake if he gives Bradley an $8 million guarantee, assuming the Pacquiao-Bradley fight will bring in 900,000 PPV buys like last time. I see it as a situation where the fight will get diminishing returns where they’ll be lucky if they can break 500,000 buys for the fight. To me, it’s just a little bit better than the Pacquiao-Rios bout, and that was a horrible fight.
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