By Dan Ambrose: If you look around at some of the ticket agencies you’ll notice very quickly that there are still tickets for this Saturday’s fight between Tim Bradley and Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
With only three days to go before the big fight it’s highly likely that the ticket agencies will have to start slashing ticket prices in order to try and move these tickets so they’re stuck with them.
So what happened? Pacquiao used to be able to sell out a venue like the MGM Grand no problem well ahead of one of his fights. Did Bob Arum blow it by choosing his new Top Rank signee Tim Bradley to fight Pacquiao rather than twisting Pacquiao’s arm to get him to fight Miguel Cotto at a catchweight? It sure seems like it. While Bradley is a popular fighter among the hardcore boxing fans, you’d be hard pressed to find many casual boxing fans who’ve ever heard of the guy. At this point in his career, Bradley simply isn’t a household name as of yet. To be sure, this Saturday’s fight will help make Bradley a better known fighter, but it’s coming way too late to make this fight a huge seller.
It’s a bad sign to still have tickets available this close to the fight, and it seems pretty clear that Arum made a blunder by choosing Bradley instead of a better known opponent. Of course, he’ll do swimmingly well because both of the fighters are in his Top Rank stable, so this will be another in house fight for him. Personally, he won’t do badly at all even if doesn’t sell out or reach 1 million pay per view buys.
However, you’d still like to see Pacquiao selling tickets and bringing in big numbers in PPV. The three Pacquiao-Bradley 24/7 series episodes have lacked drama or any kind of animosity between the two fighters. You could say that the family and religious oriented twists of the three series probably hasn’t helped sell tickets or get people to order the fight on PPV. It’s too tame and it almost looks packaged like a political infomercial instead of something that would get fans interested in buying the fight.
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