Dan Rafael of ESPN reports that Manny Pacquiao has signed to face Joshua Clottey in the place of Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a bout that will now take place at Jerry Jones’ Cowboys Stadium.
Jones and Top Rank’s Bob Arum and Todd duBoef, who toured the facility and were Jones’ guests at Saturday night’s Cowboys playoff victory against the Philadelphia Eagles, closed the deal for the bout on Sunday afternoon.
“Bob was persistent in keeping this alive as a place for Manny’s fight,” Jones told ESPN.com, while celebrating the deal with Arum and duBoef. “I’m so glad Bob came back to us. We are so excited about this event and that we will be able to bring a big fight here for the Hispanic boxing fans, and all boxing fans in this area, who are also Dallas Cowboys fans. It’s important for us. Manny is such an exemplary athlete.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Jones could not contain his excitement.
Payout Perspective:
The fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather is now definitely out of the question for March 13th, and cynics would argue that it may not ever happen. However, if Pacquiao defeats Clottey in impressive fashion and Mayweather does the same with his next opponent, it could put enough pressure on both parties to sit back down at the table.
No date has been given for the Pacquiao-Clottey fight, but it’s rumored that Mayweather is looking to keep his March 13th data at the MGM Grand in Vegas. We’ve talked about how the potential fight would have cannibalized some of the UFC’s media coverage in March – which, in particular, is a big month for the UFC – but even if both Pacquiao and Mayweather fight separately in March, the coverage likely won’t be enough to impact the UFC.
The new concern, as Dave Meltzer pointed out in an issue of his Wrestling Observer the other day, is that the UFC will not only be competing against Wrestlemania, but also the NCAA March Madness tournament. Both pull strongly in the 18-34 demo.
However, it should be noted that for as much as we talk about event scheduling – avoiding straight-up competition with stronger draws – there’s always going to be a degree of competition for MMA. The sport and its properties will simply have to find a way to provide a more compelling product.
This is why boxing is dying and the entire system is the problem. The UFC has the best system right now. It will slowly change towards boxing IMO because of greed of fighters and other parties getting involved. But the boxing situation is the same thing that always happens. 2 fighters who are scared to death to lose a fight and lose the big pay days they are used to. So they hand pick styles to fight. This is what happens when you give fighters complete control. If you are on top of the world in fame and money why would you ever risk it? Thats why you see boxers fighting so seldom. Why you see haggling over silly differences like glove size, ring size, location, fight weight, etc.
There is no UFC to force these guys to fight the best and not duck guys. As long as fighters dont out grow the UFC name brand(mean fighters dont make more money on their own rather than under the UFC banner) mma will avoid most of the problems facing boxing. But the bigger the sport gets the more popular the fighters get and the harder it will be for the UFC to keep all the best guys fighting each other. Which leads to what we have with Pac vs PBF. These guys will fights different guys and then we will hear more BS hype and the fight wont happen again. This will go on after each fight. The two fighting each other is probably just a big PR stunt to draw attention to both fighters to get bigger pay days fighting lessor opponents.
Now people are going to watch Pac next fight becaus they are invested in him winning to keep the Super fight alive. Then they will be forced to watch PBFs fight and hope he wins. These guys are always using tricks to dope fans into caring about the fights when the sport itself isnt enough.