By now it must be obvious that the Ricky Hatton – Floyd Mayweather bout was an incredibly popular bout with the boxing public, but even more shocking are the final PPV numbers, which came out to over 850,000 buys in the United States, including $47 million in TV revenue, according to ESPN. Not bad for a fight that was a mismatch the minute the contract was signed for the bout. However, as good as the numbers were, they paled in comparison to the numbers for the Oscar De La Hoya bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr., which generated 2.4 million PPV buys and $134 million.
That bout had a tremendous advantage over Hatton-Mayweather, simply because of De La Hoya’s huge following among both Latin and Caucasian fans. In contrast, Hatton, a British fighter, is still largely unknown to many American fans, many of whom were hearing him of him for the first time in his bout with Mayweather. Regrettably, due to Hatton’s poor performance against Mayweather, it’s not likely he picked up many fans among the Americans, unless you count fans that felt sympathy for him.
Mayweather himself netted a cool $50 million for his two bouts in 2007 against De La Hoya and Hatton, even though neither of them are even close to being considered the top of the welterweight class. It will be interesting to see if Mayweather can somehow top this when/if he does decide to get back in the ring.
Admittedly, he has no shortage of potential opponents with which to fight, but none of them, aside from perhaps Shane Mosley, would guarantee anything close to the kind of money he made against De La Hoya and Hatton.