By Jim Dower: The May 1st bout between unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (40-0, 25 KO’s) and Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 KO’s) will be shown at 416 movie theaters around the U.S. in an effort to get more boxing fans to see the fight. This will enable larger groups people to see the fight without having to squeeze them in small living rooms or bars or having to pluck down $49.95 to see the fight on Pay-Per-View. The cost of tickets will be $20, which is heck of a lot better than paying an extra $30 and watching it on a small screen.
Tickets for the theater event can be purchased at fathomevents.com. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer believes that the Mayweather-Mosley fight will wind up as the biggest PPV event in boxing history, surprising the 2007 bout between Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya. It’s unclear whether it will come close to that fight, however, because the fight isn’t attracting a lot of attention compared to the De La Hoya-Mayweather bout years ago.
One problem that seems to be turning some boxing fans off about this fight is that Mosley is 38-years-old, and hasn’t fought in over a year. That’s a long time of being out of the public eye, and not a good thing when trying to build up a huge mega fight. Mosley last fought an exciting opponent three years ago when he was beaten Miguel Cotto. Although Mosley did beat Antonio Margarito last year in January, it wasn’t a fight that attracted a huge amount of attention.
Additionally, Mayweather has fought only once in the past three years, beating 36-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez last September. Mayweather had a chance recently to fight Manny Pacquiao, but insisted on having Pacquiao and himself take Olympic style random blood tests, which isn’t required by the Nevada Athletic Commission at this time. Eventually, the tests got in the way of him being able to put together a fight with Pacquiao.
This was a big blow to boxing, because the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was generating tons of interest outside of the boxing community by casual fans that were showing interest in this fight. Compared to the Mayweather-Pacquiao excitement that was building up for over a month, the Mayweather-Mosley fight hasn’t generated nearly the same kind of interest. To be fair, there’s still three weeks to go before the Mayweather vs. Mosley fight. It could pick up interest in the next two weeks, but it is strangely quiet for a fight that’s supposed to be breaking PPV records. It wasn’t like this for the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight. There was nonstop talk about that fight all the way up to the bout.
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