By Chris Williams: On September 19th, the Golden Boy Promotions card featuring Floyd Mayweather making his comeback against Juan Manuel Marquez will be matched against the UFC 103 event on the same night at the American Airlines Center, in Dallas, Texas. The two events will be competing for pay-per-view dollars from fans. At this point, UFC 103 looks to have the advantage, because the price of the their card is five dollars cheaper at $44.95 compared to the steeper priced $49.95 for the Mayweather vs. Marquez card.
The UFC has gone one step further, however, by announcing that they’ll be showing the preliminary card for free on Spike TV. This means that fans would be able to see seven fights for free without having to purchase the card. Besides that, the UFC 103 card has five exciting fights on the main card with Rich Franklin facing Vitor Belfort, heavyweight Mirko Filipović vs. Junior dos Santos, welterweight Mike Swick vs. Martin Kampmann, Josh Koscheck vs. Frank Trigg and lightweight Tyson Griffin vs. Hermes Franca.
In contrast, The Mayweather-Marquez fight has WBA featherweight champion Chris John fighting Rocky Juarez in a rematch, Zab Judah vs. Antonio Diaz and Vicente Escobedo vs. Michael Katsidis. Golden Boy has done a somewhat decent job at accumulating some talent for the undercard of the boxing event, but I don’t know it will be enough to outsell the UFC 103 event.
I’m personally a fan of both MMA and boxing, but if you look at the sheer numbers and the talent that the two fight cards are putting forth, you almost have to go with the UFC 103 event if you have half a brain. Not only will you get a better price for the pay-per-view event if you go with the UFC 103 card, but you’ll also get to see many more fights than you will with the Mayweather-Marquez card.
I really want to see Mayweather fight to see where he’s at after two long years away from boxing, but since Floyd decided to fight a smaller fighter than him in Marquez, who is putting on a ton of weight to fight Mayweather at a catch weight, I don’t see this fight as being competitive as it would be if Mayweather had fought someone his own size.
It’s kind of a put off when you get a bigger fighter picking on someone as small as Marquez. Yes, Marquez talented but you can’t get away from the fact that he’s so much smaller than Mayweather. I don’t like the idea of paying $50 bucks to see a bully beat up a smaller fighter nor do I get off on seeing an undercard of so-so fighters, like the Mayweather-Marquez fight appears to be.
I like Esocobedo, Judah, Juarez and Katsidis, but frankly, I don’t see any of them ending up as champions in the future. Judah had his time and looks to be the decline and I don’t see Escobedo, Juarez or Katsidis as champion caliber talent.
I still think the Mayweather-Marquez fight will do alright in terms of pay-per-view buys, but only because of the HBO 24/7 series that will help attract some buyers. However, when I say it will do alright, I’m talking in the range of 200,0000 to 300,000 buys, which is probably far short of what Golden Boy is hoping for. Those numbers will likely pale compared to the UFC 103 buys, and the reason will be simple. The UFC 103 event is a much better deal, both financially and in terms of showing more interesting fights.
For the Mayweather-Marquez event to come out ahead, Golden Boy would need to probably drop the pay-per-view price and substitute three other fights in the place of the ones they have on the undercard. I would put Golden Boy’s best talent on the card and look for some other quality fighters to add beyond that. Throw in Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley against some quality fighters and then we’re cooking with gas.
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