Espinoza interested in Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch

By Boxing News - 09/09/2015 - Comments

Image: Espinoza interested in Mayweather-Pacquiao rematchBy Chris Williams: Stephen Espinoza of Showtime Sports says he would be interested in a rematch between Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) and Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) from a fan’s perspective, but he’s now sure if the outcome would be any different than the last time they fought on May 2nd.

Mayweather beat Pacquiao conclusively in winning a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 116-112, 118-110 and 116-112. Perhaps a more accurate score for the fight was the 118-110 score. The judges that scored it 116-112 must have watching another fight altogether because there’s no way that Pacquiao did that well in the fight.

Having a big honcho like Espinoza interested in putting on a Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch is a good thing. Now all Espinoza needs to do is convince Mayweather to take the fight, and we could see a second fight between these two stars.

If Mayweather gives the green light to a second fight against Pacquiao, he would need some cooperation from Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum. This means Arum couldn’t come out of left field in asking for a 50-50 purse split for the fight, or likely even 60-40. I think for a second fight to get made, Pacquiao would need to humble himself and take a 65-35 or 70-30 cut.

It also wouldn’t hurt for Pacquiao to grovel a little by admitting that he lost the fight and deserved to lose the fight last May. These would be basic humbling overtures that Pacquiao could do to make the rematch a reality. Pacquiao should also be the one to make the first move by contacting Mayweather by phone. It wouldn’t look good for a big star like Mayweather to have to make the first move for a fight against someone he already proved was beneath him in terms of talent.

When asked by Sports Illustrated writer Chris Mannix at SI.com if he’d like to see Mayweather and Pacquiao did it again, Espinoza said “I would…Personally, I don’t see any reason to think that the outcome would be any different. Having said that, it’s a matchup for the ages. And I would always want to see it, want to see it as many times as they would do it.”

Yes, I do agree with Espinoza about the outcome not being any different than it was the first time. But with Pacquiao’s shoulder injury excuse that he brought up after the fight, a lot of boxing fans think that Mayweather’s fantastic win was somehow tainted because of that. These fans, including Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, think that he would beat Mayweather if he were 100% in a rematch.

I don’t think it would be any less of a one-sided fight than the first fight, but there is at least an excuse now to have a rematch. Mayweather could come back next year for the right price if Pacquiao is willing to take a small enough purse split for the fight to be worth it for Mayweather. But it would also likely require Showtime to give Mayweather a nice guarantee of a big wad of green cash to make it worthwhile for him to come back and whip Pacquiao a second time.

I’m not sure what the current guarantee is from Showtime for each fight, but if it’s $30 million+ right now, then it might need to be bumped up to the $40 million range. A second Mayweather-Pacquiao fight would likely bring in no less than 2 million pay-per-view buys, possibly more depending on how well they market it.

The last time they didn’t do much marketing in terms of having a world tour and including an All Access series. They would need to actually do these things a second time, because there will be a lot of boxing fans that likely won’t be interested in seeing the rematch due to how one-sided the first fight was. But by going on a tour of the U.S, and elsewhere, I think they could possibly pull in enough fans to bump the PPV buys up to the 3 million range.

“Is there a demand for it publicly? And, if the public decides that there’s demand, maybe there’s enough demand that Floyd comes back for it,” Espinoza said.

I think there is a demand for a Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch, but I think there could be more of a demand if Pacquiao beats someone good when he comes back from his shoulder injury in February or March next year.



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