By Dan Ambrose: High powered adviser Al Haymon has allegedly offered WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto $40 million to face superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr, according to The Sport Press.
This hasn’t been confirmed to be true as of yet, but if does turn out to be true then it would be a huge amount of money for the 34-year-old Cotto. With that kind of money the assumption would be that the Mayweather-Cotto 2 fight would do over 2 million pay-per-view buys, and it’s highly doubtful that it could bring in those kinds of numbers unless the fight card was totally loaded with big stars from top to bottom.
Cotto is still in talks with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s management for a fight on May 2nd. However, Mayweather remains an option for Cotto if he doesn’t face Canelo. It’s unclear if Mayweather’s name is just being used to help bring in the red-haired Canelo at a lesser price or if Cotto’s management are truly serious about wanting to face Mayweather.
If Haymon is going to pay Cotto $40 million to face Mayweather in a rematch, then there’s really no reason for Cotto to face Canelo, because he’s not likely to make anything close to that kind of money for that fight.
While Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya is assuming that the Cotto-Canelo fight will bring in big numbers on pay-per-view, it’s very likely that it won’t bring in much more than 1 million buys, if that.
We’re probably talking about a fight that will struggle to hit 900,000 pay-per-view buys at best. That’s why Cotto would be better off taking the Haymon offer if it’s a legitimate one rather than just a rumor.
Cotto is promoted by Bob Arum of Top Rank, and I’m not so sure whether Cotto would accept an offer to fight Mayweather given his close relationship to Arum. However, $40 million is big, big money and I don’t know how Cotto could walk away from that kind of money. He’s never made that kind of cash for a single fight during his career, and I don’t see how he could say no to it.
With Mayweather making over $30 million for his fights there likely wouldn’t be enough money left over for Cotto to rake in $40 million to fight Mayweather unless the fight drew huge numbers on PPV. If the money would be coming straight from Haymon out of his own pocket, it wouldn’t make sense if he wasn’t going to make his money back on the PPV and gate money.
It’s hard to know how a second fight between Mayweather and Cotto would do on pay-per-view. It’s been two years since they fought each other, and some boxing fans might not be too eager to pay to see them go at it again unless Mayweather Promotions did a great job of marketing the fight.
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