Mirrors
and smoke is what Mayweather and Pacquiao are all about lately, as every
media report you read about them is a posturing maneuver. Let's
face it, you
can't make a fight without actually negotiating all the terms first. There
hasn't been any real sit downs by either camp to try and make this fight a reality. Do you think a fight of this magnitude gets made overnight,
on Twitter nevertheless?
Boxing is
a business like any other, and despite what the viewing public demands,
this fight isn't priority yet. When you consider that each fighter can
make a substantial amount fighting cherry-picked opposition and paying
them a small fraction (sometimes less than 10%) of what they themselves
are guaranteed, it makes business sense.
In order
for this fight to happen, every aspect of the promotion has to have
maximum value. These elite fighters are asking for some serious
GUARANTEES! This is not about leaving behind "legacies," or
about saving the
sport of boxing. This is why it's called prizefighting!
Just check out Bob
Arum's recent quote about building a temporary 45,000 seat capacity
stadium that will take months to build for this fight: "The amount of
money in this fight is relatively limited. Let's assume you get $2.5
million homes to buy the fight and you charge $70 [for a pay-per-view
order], so you're talking about $87.5 million into the promotion and the
foreign rights aren't going to be worth more than $5 million. So now
you're coming down to where the fight is barely around $100 million; now
it really depends on your gate. So if you can get $40 million from your
gate or you can get $20 million from your gate, it's a big f**king
difference. It's a big difference."
Arum has also stated that he is willing
to pony up Pacquiao's guarantee (approximately a cool $40 million), but
the real question is who's going to guarantee "Money Mayweather's" money?
(An amount which rest assure will be substantially higher than Pacman's at a
rumored $100 million).
When
looking at these "limited numbers" you realize that this fight can quickly
burn the deep pockets of the famed promoters who would be ponying up
record breaking guarantees! Seems to me, that it is the highly inflated
guarantees that have become the stumbling blocks that are keeping this
fight from being made. Back in the 80's, when I started to watch the sport
of boxing, guarantees didn't exist; fighters would just split the proceeds.
If that
were the case, Mayweather vs Pacquiao would have happened two years
ago. Instead, this dream fight may turn into the next hyped up fight that
never happened, a la Lennox Lewis vs Riddick Bowe. As the years go by, the
public quickly loses interest in the match up. Judging by this comment, I
think it's fair to say that Bob Arum doesn't
disagree... "I would say that
it may turn into sour milk if it doesn't happen this year, yeah," said
Arum.
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