By Chris Williams: It was originally thought by some fans that Floyd Mayweather Jr’s delay in announcing his mega-fight with Manny Pacquiao would potentially encroach upon their ability to conduct a long press tour to help promote their May 2nd fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
But as it turns out, the two fighters will likely only be touring one city in the buildup to the fight, according to Dan Rafael. They’re be going go either New York or Las Angeles, California to promote the fight. Additionally, there will be only two press tours, and possibly no public sale of the tickets for the fight.
”I’m also told there likely will be only 2 #MayweatherPacquiao prefight pressers. No tour. 1 probably early March in NY or LA, 1 fight week,” Rafael said on his twitter. ”I’m told there’s good chance there will be no public ticket sales for #MayweatherPacquiao. Even if there are probably only few hundred tix.”
With the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight only hitting one city rather than a long 11-city press tour, they’ll be counting on boxing fans finding out about the fight by word of mouth pretty much. There’s already talk that there won’t be an HBO 24/7 and Showtime All Access series.
In place of the four-episode series, HBO and Showtime will be televising a single one-hour documentary on the two fighters, which they’ll televise over and over again to increase the chances of reaching all the boxing fans.
It’s going to be interesting to see if the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight will be able to bring in 3 million pay-per-view buys or more with the fighters not doing a long press tour, and there not being the 24/7 and All Access episodes.
If the fight fails to hit the 3 million buy mark, and if it doesn’t break the Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya record of 2.4 million buys, you can guess that the blame will be put on the fact that they failed to market the fight to the hilt the way they should have.
They only get one chance to do this, because the interest in the fight will likely decrease in a rematch unless the first fight is an exciting affair. This is why they should be working hard to market the fight to as many boxing fans as possible by having a long tour, and including the 24/7 and All Access episodes.
There will be three titles on the line for the fight, with Mayweather having his WBA and WBC welterweight straps up for grabs, and Pacquiao putting his WBO title on the line. In truth, it really doesn’t matter whether world titles are on the line or not for this fight, because it’s a match-up that is much bigger than the straps that the two fighters are holding.
With the way that the various sanctioning bodies have watered down each division with multiple titles for each weight class, it kind of has lessened the meaning for a fighter to say he’s a champion. When you have potentially five champions in each division, it cheapens it because you get too many title holders, and you champions with less than superb talent.
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