Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports talks about the possibility of Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey exceeding initial buyrate expectations of 500,000 to 700,000 for the fight held at Cowboys Stadium.
The closed-circuit locations and presales in the East are at record levels, surpassing where they were in 2007 for the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight. Indications are that the pay-per-view is tracking better than expected, and Arum said he won’t be shocked if it touches 900,000 buyers.
That’s an astonishing number for just about any fight but even more so for a bout against a largely unknown opponent like Clottey, who doesn’t bring with him a large fan base.
Had Pacquiao-Clottey fought two years ago, Arum would have been lucky to have sold a quarter of the tickets he has sold for Saturday’s card.
Payout Perspective:
There were two possibilities coming out of the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiation debacle:
1.) The fans would throw up their hands and say “we’re done!”
2.) All that arguing back and forth would generate so much press over a two month period to raise the profile and interest levels of both fighters.
It would seem the latter has taken place. The fans won’t be happy until they see Mayweather-Pacquiao, but in the mean time the interest level in these two fighters has never been higher. I, too, would be surprised if this fight didn’t hit 700,000 buys; and Mayweather-Mosley will like exceed 1 million buys.
Pretty good numbers for the sport. These two fighters could do a lot to revive interest in the sport across the globe.
Too bad the undercard sucked and main event was whatever.
Boxing undercards always seem to suck. They’re an afterthought. I didn’t even know who was on the undercard until I watched it.
I thought the main event (heretofore referred to as “The Event”) was “interesting”. Pacquiao got to show a few more wrinkles in his game. I agree it was not the most exciting fight due to Clottey’s defensive style, but Pacman did his best to dazzle the crowd and in a way, fighting a bigger man who has a very defensive style starts to make me wonder what Manny could to to another bigger man with a very defensive style…
I was there at the event. (The EVENT!)
The crowd was just dying to erupt. Hell, they did the wave for 10 minutes during one fight even. Talk about a game crowd.
Despite the lackluster fights, the most everyone seemed to have a great time. Dallas Cowboys players were there and posing with fans, as were a few boxers in attendance.
An old hardcore guy like me has to learn to realize that fight shows are often about more than what is going on in the ring, as tough as that is for me to take. I simply want to see boxing matches and nothing else. By contrast, it seems to me that today’s fan wants loud music, giant screens, celebrity sightings, access to athletes, a lot of beer and stuff along those lines.
I believe that most of the 51,000 left feeling like they got a pretty good bang for their entertainment buck. I certainly believe that Jerry Jones is going to want to put more boxing shows on in that place.
Wow, if they could only produce a Heavy Weight people would be interested in. 51 thousand people is amazing.
im sure if they promote david haye it would be huge in boxing…its the right path for boxing to take…getting more mainstream attention with the combo of nfl and boxing. and jerry jones is stating that he is only going to deal with bob arum for future fights….no wonder dana and fertitia were sucking up to bob arum lol