Purses: Mayweather $32 million, Berto $4 million

By Boxing News - 09/11/2015 - Comments

Image: Purses: Mayweather $32 million, Berto $4 millionBy Jim Dower: In a huge pay cut, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) will be making a guarantee of $32 million for his title defense against Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) this Saturday night on Showtime pay-per-view. This is down from the $250 million that Mayweather made for his last fight against Manny Pacquiao last May.

Mayweather could be making more for his next fight if he had selected an opponent that the boxing world is interested in seeing him fight like Gennady Golovkin. It would probably take someone like Golovkin for Mayweather to get a significant bump up in pay.

Fighting guys like Amir “King” Khan, Keith “One Time” Thurman, Shawn “Showtime” Porter or Kell “Special K” Brook probably wouldn’t be big enough fights for Mayweather to make really good money.

The $32 million guarantee for Mayweather is the same one that he received for his fights against Robert Guerrero and Marcos Maidana. For his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Mayweather had a guarantee of $41.5 million.

Berto, 31, will be making $4 million for the fight, which will be the biggest payday of his 11-year pro career.

Other purses:

Badou Jack – $500,000
George Groves – $500,000
Roman “Rocky” Martinez – $300,000
Orlando Salido – $150,000
Jhonny Gonzalez – $50,000
Jonathan Oquendo – $50,000
Vanes Martirosyan – $150,000
Ishe Smith – $150,000

The Mayweather vs. Berto start time will be at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT on Showtime pay-per-view. Where the fight will be taking place is at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather’s fight against Pacquiao brought in a huge PPV audience of 4.4 million buys. However, Mayweather will be lucky if his fight against Berto will bring in even 800,000 buys.

There is just no demand for this fight at all. In the recent past, interest was cool for Mayweather’s fight against Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero in 2013, and his two fights against Marcos Maidana in 2014. Those fights brought in 800,000 to 1 million PPV buys. But with those fights there was still a fair amount of interest in them from fans.

With the Mayweather-Berto fight, the fans seem to be totally turned off towards this fight. One of the reasons for that is because the fans had a bad experience in paying through the roof for Mayweather’s last fight against Pacquiao, and that fight turned out to be a real disappointment in turns of action and excitement.

Neither fighter seemed willing to go all out to turn the fight into a war, which is what the fans wanted to see given the huge amounts of money that they’d paid to see it. After that horrible fight, the pressure was on Mayweather to pick out the best possible opponent to make it up to the fans.

Instead of doing this, Mayweather picked a weak opponent in Berto, who has seen better days in his career. Mayweather’s decision to fight Berto is seen some fans as Mayweather trying to give them the shaft a second time, and the fans aren’t going to be duped twice.

The price tag for the Mayweather-Berto fight is $65.99 to $75.99 on Showtime pay-per-view. That’s more money than many boxing fans are willing to pay to see a mismatch like this, even though it has a decent undercard that’s packaged with it.

Mayweather’s six-fight contract with Showtime/CBS will be expiring with the Berto fight. It’s thought that Mayweather will then sign on with the highest bidder next year in signing with either HBO or Showtime to continue his career.



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