(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Yannis Mihanos: Very little time is left before tonight’s important welterweight unification fight between WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) and WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Pay-per-view sales are not expected to come not any near to the previous fight of Floyd’s against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez from last September. Maidana is a formidable name with a welterweight title too, but not near as popular as the previous guy Canelo Alvarez.
In a new twist this Saturday morning, it was learnt that the boxing gloves [a custom pair of Everlast MX] that Maidana had planned on using for the fight were found to have little padding around the knuckle areas of the gloves by Mayweather and Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions.
Initially, the Mayweather team were talking potentially of canceling the fight if Maidana doesn’t comply with his wishes. However, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer has been trying to calm the media by saying that Mayweather and Maidana will work out the gloves issue and that the fight will take place.
There is a lot of money at stake: a possible $32 million fee for Floyd from Showtime in addition to the pay-per-view money he’ll be getting. Boxing today is a monetary business unlike the old times that a few people were involved.
Will the gloves controversy cause the PPV sales to spike a little bit more or even a lot more? Yeah, I believe it will. The glove problem will make even more fans interested to pay and watch the fight.
The fight will take place tonight but I don’t buy into the controversy about the gloves, because I see this as a marketing angle to get more boxing fans interested in paying to see the fight on Showtime PPV. I hope Maidana will rise to the occasion and give to Mayweather a good competitive fight. It’s got the potential for an exciting fight.
Mayweather looked trim and toned at yesterday’s weigh-in, whereas Maidana appeared strangely calm, like this was a walk in the park for him.
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