Khan expects Canelo PPV numbers to beat Pacquiao-Bradley 3 PPV numbers

By Boxing News - 02/11/2016 - Comments

khan55By Chris Williams: Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) believes that Bob Arum, the promoter for Manny Pacquiao, made a mistake in failing to sign him for Pacquiao’s next opponent on April 9. Arum had the chance of getting Khan as Pacquiao’s next opponent for a fight that likely would have made huge money on HBO PPV.

Instead of doing that, Arum went with one of his own Top Rank stable fighters in WBO 147lb champion Tim Bradley as Pacquiao’s next opponent. Pacquiao has already fought Bradley twice previously, and there is not much interest from the fans in seeing a third fight between them.

In the meantime, Khan will be fighting WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) on May 7 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Khan expects his fight against Canelo will bring in more PPV buys than the Pacquiao-Bradley 3 fight.

Khan is probably right about that too judging by the hype that the two different fights are generating. The fans are mainly talking about the Canelo-Khan fight right now, and almost none are discussing the Pacquiao-Bradley fight.

“Can you believe that? The reason the Pacquiao fight never happened is I think Bob [Arum] knew that I’m too dangerous for him,” Khan said to Fighthype.com. “I think that would’ve done great numbers…But this is a massive international fight as well. It was so unexpected.”

I think Arum whiffed on this one by choosing Bradley for Pacquiao instead of Khan. If the idea was to protect Pacquiao from potentially losing to Khan, then I can understand why Arum would have wanted to go with Bradley. He is obviously not much of a treat to beat Pacquiao because he clearly lost both fights against him.

If Arum really believes that Bradley was the better option for Pacquiao due to the money that he can make, I think he is going to be dead wrong and Khan believes the same way. He has noticed the amount of fan interest his fight with Canelo has attracted and he expects that to translate over to the PPV sales for the fight.

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“I really believe we can hit some big numbers on this and honestly, I really believe that I can beat Pacquiao-Bradley numbers. I don’t know what Bob Arum was saying that we’re going to do bad numbers,” Khan said. “The amount of hype that’s in this fight, you have to say that the hype’s huge and people are interested in this fight. Look, people don’t know what to expect because you’ve got speed, explosiveness, and movement versus a guy who’s powerful, you know, and this is a boxer versus a fighter.”

Arum has made the mistake in the recent past in putting Pacquiao in with Chris Algieri and Brandon Rios in fights that did not generate a lot of PPV buys. I believe that Arum is making another mistake by selecting Bradley as Pacquiao’s next opponent rather than putting him in with Khan and getting a PPV buys. Arum should have matched Pacquiao or Bradley against Canelo.

If Arum had put Pacquiao in with Khan, and Bradley with Canelo, he would have done a great job and brought in big numbers for his Top Rank company. Granted, Arum would not have all the money going to his Top Rank company due to him having to share profits with an outside promoter, but the money would still be excellent from those two fights and well worth it.

I’m just wondering if the 84-year-old Arum is starting to lose his touch when it comes to match-making. He should have been wise enough to know that you cannot shove a third Pacquiao-Bradley fight down the boxing public’s throat and expect them to gladly pay to see the needless fight.

Pacquiao already proved that he was better than Bradley by beating him soundly in 2014. There is absolutely no need for a third fight between them. Arum would have done a better job if he had matched Pacquiao against Khan. That would have been a great fight, as the fans would be seeing a different match-up instead of another one of Arum’s rematches involving his Top Rank stable fighters Pacquiao and Bradley.



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