By Dave Lahr: Manny Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum were hoping that they could get the original 50-50 share of the purse for a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. However, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now. Mayweather reportedly wants the bigger cut of the revenue due to his better pay-per-view numbers for his fight with Shane Mosley on May 1st of this year. Mayweather brought in 1.4 million PPV buys, which was double the 700,000 for Pacquiao’s recent fight against Joshua Clottey.
According to Philstar.com, Pacquiao’s lawyer Franklin Gacal says “We will never agree to that.” This is why it now seems like it was a mistake for Pacquiao to be matched up against Clottey instead of a more popular fighter. Clottey is clearly tough, as well as one of Arum’s Top Rank fighters, but he isn’t a draw with boxing fans. In hindsight, Arum should have put Pacquiao in with a more popular fighter, even if they weren’t with Top Rank. Now Mayweather has his better PPV numbers to justify getting a bigger purse split with Pacquiao and there’s not much they can say to counter this because Mayweather definitely did get much bigger numbers than Pacquiao.
Gacal says “It’s the Cotto fight they [Mayweather] should look at and not the Clottey fight. And it’s pretty even, so we’re sticking to the 50-50 percent split between Manny and Floyd if they ever fight.”
The Pacquiao-Cotto PPV numbers were 1.25 million buys, which is slightly less than Mayweather-Mosley’s numbers of 1.4 million PPV buys. However, it’s still less, so it’s hard to justify getting a 50-50 split with the numbers being less than Mayweather’s. Also, Mayweather’s fight with Juan Manuel Marquez last year brought in 1 million PPV buys. In contrast, Pacquiao’s 2nd fight with Marquez received less than half of Mayweather’s numbers at 400,000 PPV buys. In looking at Mayweather’s better numbers, it’s hard to see how Pacquiao’s team could want a 50-50 deal.
The numbers just aren’t there to justify getting an even split, as far as I can tell. Besides the purse split, there’s also the random blood tests that Mayweather wants Pacquiao to agree to. Pacquiao will probably have to agree to take them all the way up until the fight if he wants to fight Mayweather, because that’s what Floyd’s been talking about.
If the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight can be made, both fighters would be guaranteed $40 million each, if they agree to the 50-50 split. However, Mayweather just made that amount in his fight with Mosley. For him to fight Pacquiao, he’s probably going to want bigger money than that and that’s another reason why the 50-50 deal probably won’t work.
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