Mayweather-Marquez takes in 1 Million PPV Sales – News

By Boxing News - 09/25/2009 - Comments

By Chris Williams: HBO is announcing that last weekend’s bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Juan Manuel Marquez has brought in an incredible 1 million pay-per-view buys, bringing in $52 million dollars. If this number is in fact true, and not some bogus number thrown up by HBO to try and make the Mayweather-Marquez event look bigger and better than it was perceived, then I see it as a bad thing for boxing.

If a mismatch like this can do this well by selling it to the casual boxing public with HBO’s Mayweather-Marquez 24/7 series, and packaging it with an undercard filled with what I consider to be uninteresting fighters, then what’s to stop this kind of thing from occurring in the future? If HBO can sell Mayweather vs. a lightweight, then why even bother putting Mayweather in with a capable fighter his own size that is a threat to him?

marquez56458Why not seek out more little fighters, maybe even smaller than Marquez so that Mayweather can look really impressive and more money is made. Some people might see this as a validation of Mayweather’s talent and notoriety in the sport, but when boxing fans are served up one-sided mismatches like this, then the fans lose. It doesn’t necessarily need to be about mismatches in size. A mismatch between talent levels is just as bad. Just at looking tat the Mayweather-Marquez fight, I absolutely knew 100% that this fight was a pathetic mismatch, and so did a ton of other knowledgeable sports experts. However, the poor casual fan with his rudimentary knowledge about the sport didn’t realize obviously that Marquez had virtually no chance and threw away their hard earned $50 on this dreary mismatch.

That’s really sad. I didn’t waste a dime on this and saved my money rather than throw it away. I’ll do the same thing in the future when I see more mismatches and they can put together 24/7 series until they’re blue in the face, but I won’t purchase it if it’s a garbage match-up like the Mayweather-Marquez fight. And that goes for Mayweather-Pacquiao. If they want to show Mayweather, then let him fight someone his own size like Shane Mosley or Miguel Cotto rather than some teeny tiny fighter from two to three divisions below him.

I don’t care if the event did well. The fight was worse than horrible, a total mismatch from the word go and painfully boring to watch unless you like seeing a little guy get dominated all night long by a younger, bigger and faster fighter. I like Mayweather a lot as a fighter, but I don’t like seeing him fight a shrimp. Just I wouldn’t like to see Chad Dawson fight a welterweight or Wladimir Klitschko to fight a small, old light heavyweight.

How would that look? Klitschko hand picks and old light heavyweight to fight and then puts the fight on pay-per-view for $50. You think that would go over well? Maybe it would if HBO put on one of their 24/7 series and hyped the fight, making it seem as if it were to be competitive. The ignorant boxing public, the ones that don’t have clue one about boxing, would gladly purchase it on pay-per-view, thinking they’d be watching a competitive fight. Instead, they’d see Klitschko destroy the little light heavyweight in a round or two or possibly drag it out like Mayweather did by jabbing the poor little guy for 12 rounds.

Not all of the success of this event was because of Mayweather. Perhaps a good portion of it was because of Hispanic viewers purchasing the card to see Marquez fight. However, I imagine that they were less than pleased with the results, and I can’t blame them. Marquez is really a super featherweight who only recently moved up to lightweight.

Marquez doesn’t look good nearly as good as lightweight than he did as a featherweight or super featherweight. Add to that the fact that Mayweather came in two pounds over the 144 pound catch weight that Marquez and Mayweather was supposed to be fighting at, meaning that Marquez was fighting Mayweather at the full weight limit of the welterweight division.

The weight probably didn’t matter in the end as far as the ultimate decision goes, because Mayweather clearly would have beaten Marquez no matter what weight that they came in at. However, it would have been fairer to Marquez, who was moving up nine pounds to fight Mayweather and who did his part by coming in at 142, two pounds under the catch weight limit of 144.

As I said, I think the results of this fight may lead to a disturbing trend of hyping more mismatches in the future by putting together an HBO 24/7 series and advertising it like crazy.



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