The Big Boss and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is expecting big things from the November 13th fight between his two Top Rank fighters Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito when they go at it in the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. Arum sees Pacquiao-Margarito bout doing more than 1.3 million pay per view buys, which would make it an even more successful fight than Pacquiao’s biggest bout of his career against Oscar De La Hoya in 2008. That fight did 1.3 million PPV buys.
Speaking to the Manilla Bulletin – mb.com.ph, Arum said this: “I am confident this fight will do well over the 1.3 million buys that Manny did against Oscar De La Hoya.” This is really interesting, because the Margarito-Pacquiao fight isn’t being discussed nearly as much in the media as the De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao fight was two years ago. From the looks of things, I think the fight will do better than the 700,000 PPV buys that Pacquiao did for his fight with Joshua Clottey in March, but I can’t see it doing more than 900,000. T
hose are still great numbers and I’m sure Arum would be more than happy to get those kinds of numbers because that’s a lot of money for him, Pacquiao and Margarito. Of course, if it were to make even more, Arum would be beaming. I don’t see how it can unless Margarito is able to attract a lot of Mexican boxing fans into paying the $55 PPV price for the fight. Margarito hasn’t brought in big PPV numbers in the past, but then again he wasn’t fighting Pacquiao. I think Arum is being way too ambitious for those kinds of numbers.
If Pacquiao started getting dropped in training camp by his sparring partners and there some suspense about this fight, that might attract a lot more viewers. But people aren’t going to want to tune in and pay a ton of money for what seems to be a mismatch. The price is way too high, Margarito has looked way too terrible and Margarito has way too much baggage because of the hand wrap issue for the fight to bring in De La Hoya-Pacquiao-like numbers. Those are numbers that only huge fights with two big stars bring in, not just one.
Margarito isn’t a monster star, and he won’t be able to attract enough fans on his own to make up the difference for all the fans that are turned off for this because of the different negative variables going in. Now, if Arum was to, out of the goodness of his own heart, drop the PPV price to $5, I could see this card selling over 1.3 million buys. Who knows? Maybe it would reach 2 million if it were priced aggressively, but $55 is too much to get big numbers. I personally won’t pay a dime to see this fight unless they discount it by $50.
I can’t stand the undercard fights with Kelly Pavlik vs. Brian Vera, Guillermo Rigondeaux vs. Ricardo Cordoba, Mike Jones vs. Jesus Soto Karass, Jose Benavidez vs. Winston Mathis, Robert Marroquin vs. Francisco Dominguez, and Mike Lee vs. Keith Debow. I see those as ESPN fights and not PPV worthy ones. Be there and never fail to see this much awaited fight of the year. Watch Pacquiao vs Margarito Online and be there to support your heroes. See You!
Source: boxingnews24
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