By Dave Lahr: The latest news going around is that Manny Pacquiao won’t agree to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. unless he gets a 50-50 split of the revenue for the fight. In an article at Philstar.com, Pacquiao says “If it’s going to be a 50-50 split, the fight will definitely push through. Right now, it’s not yet clear. He’s afraid to fight me.” Mayweather is rumored to want a 60-40 deal, which I feel is more than fair because of his huge popularity in the boxing world and his better pay per view numbers compared to Pacquiao. This isn’t charity, you know. Mayweather shouldn’t agree to fight Pacquiao on equal terms when he’s not showing that he’s equal to him in getting paying eyeballs to watch the fights.
That’s silly go give Pacquiao an equal deal when he’s getting less PPV buys. Mayweather’s last fight against Shane Mosley received 1.4 millions PPV buys. Pacquiao’s last fight against Joshua Clottey received only 700,000. Mayweather also had better numbers than Pacquiao in his fights against Oscar De La Hoya and Juan Manuel Marquez. That tells me that Mayweather is better at putting backsides in the seats and selling fights than Pacquiao at this time.
I’d be curious to see what Pacquiao’s numbers would be if he was to fight Mosley. Of course, we won’t know that because Pacquiao won’t fight him. Instead, we’ll see Pacquiao go ahead and fight a rematch with Miguel Cotto if the Mayweather fight doesn’t happen. He’ll go over old ground by fighting Cotto again and likely bring in poorer numbers. It doesn’t make sense. Pacquiao will make less money for the Cotto rematch than if he was to agree to the 40% that Mayweather is offering.
If it was me, I’d gladly take the 40% offered to me and be happy about it. That’s good money and all the popularity Pacquiao will get by fighting Mayweather will be well worth it. That’s far better than to go and fight Cotto again in a fight that pretty much nobody wants to see. Pacquiao wants to get another title, but why doesn’t he take on someone else instead of fighting Cotto again.
Given that Mayweather did twice the PPV numbers as Pacquiao did recently, I think Mayweather deserves the 60-40 deal with Pacquiao. The numbers should probably be even more tilted in Mayweather’s favor to show his better PPV numbers, something along the lines of 65-35. I think that’s a better deal. Mayweather is doing Pacquiao a favor by giving him 40%. Maybe I could have overlooked Pacquiao’s past poorer PPV numbers in his fights if he had at least gotten ones recently in his last fight, but 700,000 doesn’t get the job done. Maybe he could have gotten better numbers had his promoter Bob Arum picked a popular fighter for Pacquiao to go up against rather than choosing one of his own fighters from his stable Joshua Clottey. I saw that as a bad move as soon as the fight was announced. I knew it was going to mess things up for Pacquiao by him not getting good PPV numbers, and boy was right.
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