By Chris Williams: Well, it looks like Bob Arum’s lofty projections for the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito bout are going to fall below expectations in terms of ticket sales for the November 13th fight at the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. According to promoter Frank Warren in his column at the thesun.co.uk, 27,000 tickets have been sold for the fight. So where’s the 55,000 that were supposed to be sold?

Given that there is only two weeks left to purchase tickets, I have my doubts that this fight will make even to the 50,000 numbers that the Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey did in March. Could it be that boxing fans are showing their displeasure at the Pacquiao vs. Margarito fight by not buying tickets in high numbers?

The stadium seats 100,000 spectators and if it’s not going to be selling even half of that, Arum would have been better off putting in a place like the MGM in Las Vegas, Nevada, where at least boxing fans would be able to do some gambling before and after the fight. But 27,000, those aren’t good numbers for this close to the fight.

If this is supposed to be doing better numbers than the Clottey fight, you’d think that more tickets would have been sold by now, don’t you? I wonder if this is boxing fans showing this displeasure at seeing Pacquiao fight two less than interesting opponents in a row. Fans didn’t want to see Pacquiao fight Clottey, but that’s what they got.

And now boxing fans will be stuck with Pacquiao fighting Margarito. Sure, Pacquiao’s loyal fans will watch him fight anyone, but you can’t say the same thing about casual boxing fans. And it’s the casual boxing fans that Arum really needs to be helping scoop up tickets for this fight to bring in the really big numbers.

Margarito isn’t a huge star in the United States. Actually, I wouldn’t even call him a star at all in America. He’s known but not in a good way now that the hand wrap scandal has been revealed even more to the casual boxing fans courtesy of HBO’s 24/7 Pacquiao/Margarito episode 1.

Boxing fans see this as another mismatch like the Clottey fight, and no matter how much we’ve heard Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach saying how bad Pacquiao looks in the training camp, fans still pretty much see this as a terrible mismatch.

Is the 27,000 tickets a reflection of that? Or is it because boxing fans are still turned off from having to watch Pacquiao beat up on Clottey last time in a mismatch, and don’t want to experience that feeling again, especially when they have to pay to watch it.

The fight goes for $55 on pay per view, which to me seems almost insane. You got a fight that few fans want to see aside from the loyal Pacquiao and Margarito fans, and then you’re going to have it go for a steep $55.

You got Margarito, a fighter with a ton of baggage and who is barely known by fans, and you’re still going to price the fight at $55? That doesn’t make sense to me. If anything, the fight should be heavily discounted into the $5 to $10 range to reflect all issues with this fight. It’s going to be a catchweight fight for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title, and yet Pacquiao has never fought at junior middleweight, is unranked in the division and Margarito has only fought once in the past six years in that division. Sounds great, eh?