By Eric Thomas: ESPN is reporting that there are only 300 tickets remaining for this Saturday night’s clash between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey at the Dallas Cowboy Stadium. There are 45,000 tickets seats that have been made available for the fight, and there are only 300 remaining. The stadium fits 80,000 for football events and 100,000 for a boxing match, such as Floyd Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.

Obviously, the numbers would be much better if Pacquiao had a popular opponent to face in this fight, but his team had to grab Clottey as a hasty replacement after negotiations with Mayweather failed to work out. The welterweight division being what it is there really aren’t any fighters that Pacquiao’s promotional team Top Rank could have selected besides Mayweather or Shane Mosley that would have been able to possibly sell out the stadium.

Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboy football team, put seven million of his own money into this fight for a site fee. With 45,000 fans purchasing tickets, he will be able to make a profit for this venture. It’s a good thing too because if he loses money on this it could cause him to be cautious about wanting to take further risks in the future when setting up boxing events.

45,000 is a good number for a fight that has only one recognizable fighter. Pacquiao is essentially the only draw on this entire card, because the undercard is stacked with mostly prospects, old fighters or guys that are more 2nd tier. It’s a rather disappointing undercard, but fans who purchase tickets for this event are coming to see Pacquiao and don’t care whether the undercard stinks or not.

This number shows how popular Pacquiao has become in such a short time. If this fight had taken place a couple of years ago before Pacquiao had fought Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto, he would be lucky to get more 10,000.

Pacquiao wasn’t well known in the United States other than by hardcore fans. Now, however, he’s become huge and what’s sad about it is that he’s right at the end of his career. He plans on running for congress in the Philippines and if he wins, it could be it for him. Besides that, his trainer Freddie Roach is eager for Pacquiao to hang up the gloves after one more fight, hopefully against Mayweather.

It’s too bad it took Pacquiao so long to become this popular. If he had become a huge star years ago, there’s no telling the kinds of numbers he could bring in with each PPV event. He would be selling huge stadiums all the time no matter how poor his opponent.