Crossover Appeal?: Mayweather-WWE & Silva-Jones
March 20, 2008
Crossover is the current buzzword in sports management. For today’s athletes competitive accomplishments are merely a means to an end. Building a brand, reaching new audiences, and crossing over into the mainstream of American culture is the name of the game. As Matt Walker, agent for Randy Couture and Gina Carano, told FIGHT! Magazine, “most of these athletes at the end of the day want to take the celebrity that they’ve built on the field or through their sports and translate that into other opportunities whether that is business, entertainment, or whatever they may want to do.â€
Cases in point: Floyd Mayweather and Anderson Silva. Mayweather is currently engaged in a month long tour of duty with WWE, culminating at Wrestlemania on March 30 in a match with the Big Show, while Silva has made news in recent weeks by challenging Roy Jones Jr to a boxing match. But all crossover opportunities are not created equally.
A $20 million appearance fee was floated by WWE and Mayweather’s management as the original justification for Mayweather’s WWE deal, but it has now become clear that his actual compensation is probably much closer to $2 million plus a pay-per-view bonus. The only remaining rationale is his manager’s stated goal of exposing the boxer to WWE’s audience of roughly 5 million viewers each week.
Thus far the mainstream buzz generated by the angle has been low with most of the exposure ambivalent at best. Furthermore, according to a recent marketing study cited in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, only the Jerry Springer show has a more negative image among advertisers than pro wrestling. Therefore it would appear that any benefit gained from WWE would be more than offset by the negative effect on Mayweather’s brand of being associated with professional wrestling.
Mayweather’s profile has never been higher coming off high profile fights with Oscar de La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, including valuable exposure on the critically acclaimed 24/7 promotional vehicle, as well as a spin on the last season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. On the heels of that type of mainstream exposure, professional wrestling seems like a step back, particularly with mainstream sponsors.
Silva’s challenge of Jones Jr. on the other hand, while certainly risky and perhaps bordering on quixotic, has a tremendous potential upside for Silva and MMA. The first high profile meeting of a martial artist and boxer, whether in the cage or ring, is going to draw significant mainstream interest. Such a contest would legitimize MMA in the mainstream by elevating Silva to the same stature as a legendary boxer.
If Silva were to beat Jones at his own game it would establish MMA as a legitimate sport and mixed martial artists as skilled athletes instead of bar room brawlers in the eyes of the mainstream media. Even in a close defeat, with Silva demonstrating competence in a secondary discipline, Silva and MMA as a whole would be elevated.
The greatest risk of course is an embarrassing loss, particularly a knockout, which would be seized by the established media to paint MMA as boxing’s inferior unskilled cousin. That storyline would prove irresistible, despite the obvious fact that boxing is not MMA and Silva is not a boxer by trade. Furthermore, a convincing loss would hurt Silva’s air of invincibility, the one thing he has going for him as a draw right now.
The calculus of a potential Silva-Jones boxing match will ultimately be weighed by Dana White, not Anderson Silva. Even if Jones agrees to the bout, the final decision rests with White per Zuffa’s standard exclusivity contract clause which covers boxing and professional wrestling in addition to MMA. The proposition is high risk, high reward, which just happens to be White’s business philosophy in a nut shell.
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