Purses: Pacquiao $20M, Bradley $4M

By Boxing News - 04/07/2016 - Comments

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By Chris Williams: The official purses have been released for Saturday’s pay-per-view card on HBO headlined by Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley 3 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao will bringing home a guaranteed $20 million for the fight, although he’ll initially be getting $7 million.

The remaining $13 million will come later on by his promoters at Top Rank. The $20 million is a decrease from the $26 million that Pacquiao received for his first fight against Bradley in 2012. Bradley will be receiving $4 million for Saturday’s fight. You have to wonder whether Top Rank will operate this card at a loss if not enough PPV buys come in.

Bradley made $5 million for his 2012 fight against Pacquiao and $6 million for his 2014 fight with him, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. You can imagine that the pay cuts that Pacquiao and Bradley are receiving is possibly due to the lack of interest in this fight. While Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has been saying that he believes the Pacquiao-Bradley 3 fight will bring in between 700,000 to 800,000 PPV buys on HBO, it just doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

It was arguably a mistake on Arum’s part to match Pacquiao against Bradley again. He and the cable people probably thought that because the first two fights between Pacquiao and Bradley brought in decent numbers, then a third fight would do the same thing. However, this is a case of going to the well one time too many. I think they’re going to find out the hard way that they well is dry now, and there is no more untapped money from boxing fans in this tired old match-up. In looking at the interest in the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Amir Khan from the boxing world, it seems that Arum blew it by not having Pacquiao fight Khan instead. The interest would have likely been much greater because it would have been new blood instead of the same old Pacquiao-Bradley fight that fans have already seen twice. The great promoters have their ear to the ground in knowing what the boxing public wants to see. In this case, it looks like Arum was deaf to what the fans preferred to see.

The fight could bring in very, very low numbers on PPV. Arum thinks the lost PPV buys from fans no longer interested in seeing Pacquiao fight Bradley will be made up for fans wanting to see the undercard fights involving Oscar Valdez, Evgeny Gradovich, Gilberto Ramirez, Arthur Abraham., Jose Ramirez and Manuel Perez. However, since the hardcore boxing fans are barely talking about the undercard fights, it would suggest that it’s unlikely that the casual boxing fans will be motivated to purchase the Pacquiao-Bradley 3 card just for the undercard fights.

WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham will make $500,000 for his title defense against Top Rank promoted Gilberto Ramirez. For his part, Ramirez will bring in $140,000. Unbeaten featherweight Oscar Valdez’s purse will be $100,000, and his opponent Evgeny Gradovich will bring in $100,000 as well.

Light welterweight Jose Ramirez will be getting $75,000 for his fight against Manuel Perez. This is a 10 round fight and will likely be a bad mismatch because Perez is a journeyman level fighter. Perez will be getting $34,000.



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