By Allan Fox: Dan Rafael of ESPN says that his sources in the boxing industry tell him that the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Marcos Maidana fight brought in just 800,000 to 900,000 pay-per-view buys on Showtime PPV this month. The numbers still haven’t been officially released by Showtime, and Arum believes this could be a sign that the fight failed to bring in crazy numbers like they were obviously hoping it would be.
Golden Boy Promotions did their part in trying to hit it out of the park by adding Adrien Broner and Amir Khan to the undercard of the Mayweather-Maidana fight card. It was thought that having those two fighters on the card would mean that they could expect over 1 million buys at the minimum.
“When a fight goes through the roof the cable systems are more anxious to report the numbers,” Rafael said in his ESPN chat last Friday. “When a fight doesn’t go crazy they take their time. From what I am told by industry sources, Mayweather-Maidana likely will not crack a million buys. More realistically, I am told the number will be between 800k and 900k.”
Those PPV numbers aren’t bad, but they’re well off from Mayweather’s 2.2 million PPV buys he brought in for his fight last September against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, and a strong sign that the boxing fans weren’t too interested in seeing Mayweather fight Maidana.
In hindsight, Golden Boy could have matched Khan and Broner against better opponents instead of the guys they put them in with – Luis Collazo and Carlos Molina. Golden Boy should have added popular fighters like Danny Garcia and Lucas Matthysse to the card, because those fighters put on a great show every time they fight. Broner hasn’t looked good in ages, and Khan’s new safety first fighting style is difficult to watch now.
If the PPV numbers are confirmed to be in the 800,000 to 900,000 range, it means that Mayweather will need to make a move to face a better opponent in his next fight in September. Forget about a Maidana rematch, because it won’t happen if those PPV numbers turn out to be fact. Mayweather wouldn’t be able to risk bringing in those type of numbers again, and the chances are high that boxing fans would be less interested in seeing Mayweather fight Maidana in a rematch. You could expect even lower PPV numbers for a second fihgt.
Mayweather will need a big name like Miguel Cotto, Sergio Martinez or Canelo for his next fight to bring them back up. Facing guys like Khan, Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman, Lamont Peterson or Lucas Matthysse would be too risky for Mayweather. None of them has proven to be a PPV fighter, and it would be too big of a risk for Mayweather to fight any of them due to the potential for another fight card with low PPV numbers.
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