By Allan Fox: As we’ve seen recently the top fighters Floyd Mayweather Jr, Miguel Cotto, and Manny Pacquiao have all seen their pay-per-view numbers drop off with their recent fights. The thought here is that boxing fans are overwhelmed by the monthly PPV fights that are popping up and expanding their normal cable bills by another $60 to $75.
When you’re already paying $100 a month for overpriced cable, having your cable bill almost doubled each month, it doesn’t make a lot of people happy. For this reason the top promotional companies are either going to need to start having less PPV events, which is highly doubtful given the money these cards are making for the companies, or start putting better shows.
This means matching the likes of Mayweather, Pacquiao and Cotto against better opposition. It also means putting on good undercards with them and not scrimping in order make more for your company by keeping the profits instead of giving them to fighters on the undercards.
Bob Arum of Top Rank recently said that there are too many PPV events now. Many of the good fights that were meant to be put on normal HBO or Showtime, are now being sold as PPV events. We saw that recently with Cotto fighting Sergio Martinez. That was a good fight, but definitely not worthy of being a PPV event.
Mayweather’s fight against Marcos Maidana was another case of a fight that was hardly worthy of being on PPV. Maidana had already been exposed by Devon Alexander and Amir Khan going into that fight, and he wasn’t a huge star. It was a fight that didn’t belong on PPV, and it’s not surprising that the fight failed to bring in big PPV numbers. We still don’t even know what the final PPV numbers were for that fight because Showtime still hasn’t released them despite the fight having taken place almost two months ago.
If Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank wants to see their PPV numbers go up for their fights, they need to match their biggest stars against better opposition. It’s not going to work out if you’re asking boxing fans to pay to see guys like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fighting the likes of Alfredo Angulo or Erislandy Lara.
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