90% chance Mayweather’s next fight on Showtime PPV, not CBS, says official

By Boxing News - 07/25/2015 - Comments

Floyd Mayweather vs Manny PacquiaoBy Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather Jr’s next fight on September 12th could be on Showtime pay-per-view rather than on CBS, according to Lance Pugmire. He’s saying that an official that’s privy to the information says that there is a high possibility that Mayweather’s next fight will be on PPV.

Why that’s important potentially is because CBS is free television, and if Mayweather is going to fight someone like Andre Berto, it’s going to be a tough sell to try and convince boxing fans to purchase a fight between them.

“As it stands now, the official added it’s “90 percent” that Floyd Mayweather will fight on Showtime PPV next, not CBS,” Pugmire said on his Twitter.

Pugmire has already said that Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter and Amir Khan all won’t be getting the fight against Mayweather. With all those guys out of the running for Mayweather’s fight, it just leaves Berto, and whoever else Mayweather might be interested in facing. There’s not much left for Mayweather once you filter out Porter, Khan and Thurman.

Danny Garcia is fighting Paulie Malignaggi on August 1st, and Garcia already lost a lot of fans from his controversial win over Lamont Peterson. Mayweather would be better off fighting Peterson than Garcia. At least fans would respect his choice of opponent if he were to fight him.

If Mayweather is going to fight Andre Berto next, it’s going to be a very, very tough sell to ask boxing fans to pay to see that fight on Showtime PPV.

It’s a basic mismatch any way you want to look at it. Mayweather-Khan is a mismatch too, but Mayweather would have to chase Khan down in order to clown him. But with Berto, he’ll be right there in front of Mayweather for the entire fight, and it’s going to be bad for Berto. If he’d shown something in the last four years that would make you believe that he’ll be competitive with Mayweather, then I could see some boxing fans being interested in purchasing the fight. But Berto hasn’t done anything in ages. I think his last important win was over Jan Zaveck five years ago. You can’t count Berto’s recent wins over Steven Upsher Chambers and Josesito Lopez, because neither of those guys are 1st tier fighters. They’re both 2nd tier, and have done nothing to make you believe that Berto accomplished anything in beating them.

If Mayweather surprises boxing fans by selecting someone good like Gennady Golovkin, then he’s going to get a ton of people interested in purchasing his fight on Showtime pay-per-view. But besides Mayweather already saying he’s not interested in fighting Golovkin, it’s a fight that would be a huge headache to put together.

Golovkin fights on HBO, while Mayweather fights on Showtime. For a fight between them to be worked out, it would require executives for HBO and Showtime to meet with each other and iron out another deal similar to the deal they made last May when Mayweather fought Manny Pacquiao. HBO and Showtime were able to work out a deal for that fight because there was so much money on the line, but I don’t know if they would be willing to do that for Mayweather-Golovkin. I think the fight would bring in over 2 million PPV buys, I really do. I just don’t know that Mayweather and HBO and Showtime would be willing to make the fight.



Comments are closed.