Mayweather’s PPV numbers for Guerrero fight might be reason he chose Canelo

By Boxing News - 05/29/2013 - Comments

floyd#700By Eric Thomas: If you want to any single reason for why Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) was willing to agree face the younger, bigger and stronger Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0, 30 KO’s) on September 14th in a pay per view fight in Las Vegas, Nevada, it likely has to do with Mayweather’s PPV numbers from his last fight against Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero on May 4th.

Although the numbers still haven’t been officially released to the boxing public, the word is that they were underwhelming numbers, far fewer than what was expected. That might have pushed Mayweather to agree to the Canelo fight because having his fights bring in less than 1 million PPV buys isn’t a good thing due to his expensive six-fight Showtime/CBS deal.

Showtime is giving Mayweather a ton of money for each fight, but they obviously want to see him face the best guys at welterweight and in this case junior middleweight with Canelo Alvarez. Whether there will be pressure in the near future for Mayweather to fight other larger fighters in weight classes above him isn’t known yet.

There really isn’t anyone at welterweight for Mayweather to fight anymore that will bring in high PPV numbers other than Manny Pacquiao, but that’s a fight that probably can’t successfully negotiated for mixed reasons.

The Mayweather-Canelo fight could bring in PPV numbers above 2 million buys. That’s not something that casual boxing fans care too much about, but Showtime/CBS, Mayweather, Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions care a great deal about them because this fight will bring in a lot of money through PPV sales.

If this does really well, it’s likely that Mayweather will be facing a lot of pressure to fight Canelo in a rematch. Showtime will likely make an effort to get Mayweather to do this because they’ll see increased subscriptions to their channel for this fight and they’ll want to get those two back in the ring again to bring in additional subscribers.



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