Pacquiao to get 40% cut of revenue for Mayweather fight

By Boxing News - 01/14/2015 - Comments

pac012345By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao will be getting a 60-40 purse split for his fight against WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr if the fight gets signed for May 2nd. According to Dan Rafael, Mayweather is giving Pacquiao 40% of the cash for the fight which will be taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada and will be televised on both HBO and Showtime.

With Mayweather still not willing to put the ink on the contract, it tells you that he may be having second thoughts about his generous offer of a 60-40 cut for the 36-year-old Filipino star.

It’s quite possible that he’s having second thoughts about giving a guy with a 3-2 record in his last 5 fights so much money, especially with the way Pacquiao’s pay-per-view numbers have tanked recently with him getting similar numbers as Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s recent fights.

“According to a source involved in the negotiations Pacquiao has agreed to a 40 percent cut of the revenue, leaving Mayweather with the remaining 60 percent of a fight most believe will shatter every boxing box office record, including the all-time pay-per-view buy record of 2.4 million,” said Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.

You can make an argument that Pacquiao should get the same purse split that Canelo Alvarez got for his fight against Mayweather in 2013, because Pacquiao is now bringing in similar numbers as Canelo and he’s sporting just a 3-2 record in his last 5 fights. If Mayweather were to give Pacquiao a 60-40 purse split, he’d be overpaying Pacquiao in my estimation. 70-30 would be the better deal or 65-35.

Mayweather is giving away a lot of money if he gives Pacquiao a 60-40 deal. Mayweather would be better off sticking firm at 70-30, and if Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum fails to agree to the deal then so be it. Mayweather can always walk away and fight Miguel Cotto for a much better deal.

Arum will likely change his tune if Pacquiao’s pay-per-view numbers keep dropping like they’ve been, and then he’ll be lucky to get even a 70-30 deal with Mayweather. That’s why it’s better for Arum to strike a deal with Mayweather now before the deal gets worse in the future for the 36-year-old Filipino star.

Pacquiao and Arum would have gotten a 50-50 purse split with Mayweather in 2009, but they blew it by not accepting the full blood testing Mayweather wanted. All that money Pacquiao would have gotten for that fight ended up getting flushed down the toilet with Pacquiao making far, far less in a fight against one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Joshua Clottey in his next fight.

I’m sure Arum would like to go back in time to get that fight deal negotiated on the 50-50 terms, no matter what Mayweather asked for in terms of blood testing. That’s why I see Pacquiao and Arum needing to agree to whatever purse split Mayweather wants for this fight on May 2nd, because it’s only going to get worse for Pacquiao as more time goes by and his pay-per-view numbers continue to drop off.

You can bet that if Pacquiao doesn’t fight Mayweather next, Arum will then match Pacquiao against Jessie Vargas, one of the fighters in his Top Rank stable. Since Vargas has no fan base, we’re probably talking about a fight that will bring in pay-per-view numbers in the 300,000 range. Those are terrible. That will in turn ruin any chance of Arum being able to bargain for a decent purse split in a Mayweather fight, because it would be the third fight in the last year in which Pacquiao has brought in low PPV totals for his fights.



Comments are closed.