By Chris Williams: It looks like Bob Arum’s projections of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito bout drawing 60,000 to 70,000 fans came up a bit short last Saturday night at the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. Instead of drawing those impressive figures, the fight only brought in 41,734, which is 10,000 less than Pacquiao’s fight against the obscure fighter Joshua Clottey last March. This is bad news because Arum was so sure that he had made the right move in choosing the disgraced Margarito as Pacquiao’s opponent rather than a safer bet against the arguably much more popular but difficult Juan Manuel Marquez or Shane Mosley.

We still don’t know what the pay-per-view numbers are, but if the attendance figures are any indication of what boxing fans thought of this fight, it’s likely to come in far less than the 700,000 that Pacquiao did for his fight with Clottey in March. Those numbers were a huge drop off for Pacquiao and Arum from Manny’s fight with Miguel Cotto, which drew over 1 million buys. This could tell you that Pacquiao is getting fewer and fewer numbers because boxing fans don’t want to see back to back fights against overmatched opponents and less than popular fighters like Margarito.

Arum was counting on Margarito getting a huge Mexican following to come to the fight at the Cowboy Stadium, even though Margarito isn’t a big star in Mexico or the United States. The fight simply didn’t make sense, as Arum seemed to be gambling rather than using real logic in choosing one of his own stable fighters Margarito to fight Pacquiao instead of a much bigger and dangerous opponent than him. Of course, Pacquiao was able to win the fight and maybe that’s all that matters to Arum. Pacquiao likely would have lost to Sergio Martinez or Paul Williams. And with Marquez and Mosley, you can’t really say how Pacquiao would do in those fights. We do know that Mosley easily beat Margarito last year in a 9th round stoppage and looked a lot better than Pacquiao did in beating him.

The numbers for Pacquiao-Margarito have to be disappointing for Arum. If Clottey-Pacquiao did 50,000 with many of them being complimentary ticket giveaways, having a mere 41,000 is indication that fans are pulling back instead of growing. If I was the promoter for Pacquiao, I wouldn’t have matched him up with Margarito. I see that fight as a mistake, because it didn’t draw interest from fans.