By Chris Williams: The interest in this Saturday’s fight between Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. might not be as good as those to 40ish fighters would like for them to. According to Yahoo Sports writer Kevin Iole, the ticket sales for Jones-Hopkins are “tepid at best.” That’s not good news if it stays like that by fight time, because Hopkins and Jones are both hoping that their old timers fight ends up a sellout at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The bout appears to be hampered by a lack of marketing for the fight ahead of time. In the past month, there’s hasn’t been much advertising for the fight, and now that there’s been a strong push, it might be too late to draw a huge amount of boxing fans for the fight. The fight sells for a whopping $49.95 on Pay-per-view, which is a lot of money in this economy for a fight that doesn’t have a good undercard nor an outstanding main event for that matter.

Iole says that Jones may make next to nothing for the fight, because after expenses are taken out, the first $3.5 million goes to Hopkins. Jones will get the next $3.5 million, Iole says. Beyond that, the remainder of the money will be split. If this fight ends up doing really poorly in PPV sales, brining in really low numbers, it will be interesting to see if Jones makes his money on the fight.

There’s little doubt that Hopkins get his money, but Jones is the one that may have problems if the fight does really poorly. I think the fight would have to really do badly, though, for Jones not to get his slice of the pie. The hardcore boxing fans appear to be largely disinterested in this fight, but that might not matter because the casual boxing fans will be the ones that will make or break this fight.

As we saw in the Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey fight, casual boxing fans purchased the one-sided fight in high numbers, despite the fight being a total mismatch on paper with an unknown opponent going up against Pacquiao, a major star. Jones and Hopkins are both stars, but mostly followed by older boxing fans. It’s the older boxing fans that could make their rematch a success or a failure, in this case. The bout has the misfortune of being scheduled on the same day as the Final Four basketball games, and that could be a problem for the fight if fans are tired from watching basketball all day long.

It seems that Hopkins and Jones didn’t use good timing in putting together their fight. This bout should have taken place years ago, and for it to happen now, it’s like not all that interesting anymore. Last year, they should have made the fight happen. Instead, Hopkins fought and beat a middleweight Enrique Ornelas, looking really rusty and not impressive, and Jones ended up getting destroyed by IBO cruiserweight champion Danny Green in one round.

That should have finished the idea of a Jones-Hopkins fight, but it didn’t. I guess they were expecting that boxing fans would have short memory and still be willing to buy their high priced rematch in high numbers. Given that both fighters are over 40-years-old, don’t hold titles, and Jones has is coming off a knockout loss, the fight should have been reduced in price by at least $30 to $40. For me, it’s like a good $5 fight. I might spring $10 for the fight if I was really stretching it, but $49.95? No way, not for this.