After nearly six years, the historical showdown between two of the world’s biggest boxing sensations is fast approaching. Come Saturday, eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao and undefeated five-division world champion Floyd Mayweather, Jr. will finally come face-to-face in the ring once and for all.
The road to the heavily demanded match was not an easy one, filled with negotiation disagreements and controversies, including random blood and urine testing, and a lawsuit.
But the date of the bout is set at a time that both fighters agree is better than if it happened earlier.
“Everything in life is about timing,” Mayweather said during his media day workout in Las Vegas on April 14. “I have no regrets that this fight didn’t take place five years ago. I didn’t think it was that big then, but it continued to get bigger and bigger. Not just in boxing, but outside of the sport. Pacquiao has continued to grow outside of the sport. We didn’t need to rush anything.”
On a similar note, Pacquiao said securing the fight date for this year has led to more anticipation among fans.
“More people are interested and informed about this fight now than they would’ve been five years ago,” he said.
A 5+ year road
Everything started in 2009, when Mayweather, who was retired at the time, was reportedly planning on making a comeback. News reports claimed he was eyeing a face-off with Pacquiao. That same year, just before Pacquiao fought Ricky Hatton, Mayweather announced in a press conference that he was returning to boxing.
Reports in 2009 claimed the fighters agreed to a match on March 13, 2010, but both camps later denied the reports.
Mayweather’s camp also accused Pacquaio of using performance-enhancing drugs and stated in a press release that the Filipino boxer’s refusal of drug testing was the reason the fight was cancelled. Pacquiao went on to file suit against Mayweather’s camp in the US District Court in Nevada for the accusation, which was eventually settled in 2012.
In 2010, Bob Arum of boxing promotion company Top Rank reportedly said Pacquiao would fight on Nov. 13, 2010, possibly against Mayweather. Arum challenged Mayweather to respond by midnight on July 16. He admitted there was no direct communication with anyone from Mayweather’s camp regarding the challenge.
In 2012, Arum speculated that the fighters were likely to meet in the ring in 2013, but Mayweather disagreed and blamed Arum for the event not taking place. Similarly, Alex Ariza, Pacquiao’s conditioning coach at the time, pointed the finger at Arum for the failure of earlier negotiations. Pacquiao, however, refuted these claims, saying Top Rank approved direct negotiation with Mayweather but that the American boxer’s camp had not yet communicated with them.
The May 2, 2015 date was first proposed by Mayweather in January 2014, although he mocked Pacquiao by saying he did not need to fight the Filipino because he already made much money through matches with other fighters. From 2009 to 2014, both sides had engaged in name calling. Mayweather had called the Filipino boxer a punk, as well as ‘a desperate dog’ trying to make the fight happen to get out of debt. Pacquiao responded by saying the American fighter was “just a coward, insecure and [envious of] my accomplishments.”
At the beginning of 2015, the two camps reportedly agreed to hold the match at the MGM in Las Vegas. The boxers also met in an unplanned encounter at an NBA game in Miami where Pacquiao said they exchanged phone numbers and would communicate with each other.
Finally, on Feb. 20, the bout was made official. Among conditions to which both boxers agreed on for the fight include: unannounced blood and/or urine tests to check for use of drugs, and a 60/40 split of the purse for Mayweather and Pacquiao, respectively.
What to expect
Revenue
Deemed ‘The Fight of the Century,’ the face-off between Pacquiao and Mayweather is expected to break the pay-per-view sales record, even with its heftier-than-usual price tag. A standard definition version of the fight will cost viewers $90, while a high definition viewing experience comes at a cost of $100.
The current buy record goes to the Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya fight in 2007, which was purchased by 2.48 million households. The revenue record of $152 million goes to the 2013 fight between Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez.
One article on Yahoo! Sports estimates about 3.8 million pay-per-view purchases, although the editor of Sportsbookreview.com told Forbes he believes the number will be closer to 3 million, due to illegal streaming of the fight. At standard definition, those projections equate to a possible take home of $270 million to $342 million in pay-per-view sales. Others predict up to 4 million buys, according to Reuters, which would equal a revenue of $360 million to $400 million depending on the definitions purchased. Between 55 to 65 percent of these sales will go to the fighters.
Despite projections, Ken Hershman, president of HBO Sports, is not guessing how much revenue will be generated via pay-per-view, noting they are working with “an untested retail price point” and don’t know how that will affect what he calls the “grouping phenomenon” of viewers, Reuters reported.
Still, he remains optimistic.
“Given what we are seeing in the early ordering part is that this will be a very, very successful night,” Hershman said.
Pacquiao and Mayweather are expected to take home more than $100 million each no matter who wins the fight, according to John Branch of the New York Times.
Ticket sales are also a significant portion of the fight revenue, with price tags starting at $1,500 and capping off at $7,500. Business Insider reported that tickets bring in $72 million.
Other large sources of revenue for the fight, according to Branch, include: at least $35 million from international broadcast sales, $13 million from closed-circuit broadcasts at bars throughout the country, $12 million from sponsorships and up to $1 million from merchandise sales.
Who will win
A number of sports analysts, former and current fighters, and trainers, among others, have weighed in on their picks of who will triumph in the May 2 fight.
Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya, both of whom have fought Mayweather and Pacquiao, both said they believe in different fighters.
“I’m picking Mayweather to win on points,” Hatton said, according to BBC. “It will be a very close fight, nip and tuck, with almost nothing in it. But Mayweather will finish with his nose in front.”
But De La Hoya, who described Pacquiao as “a fly you can’t shoo away” and a fighter who threw loads and loads of punches at him during their ring encounter in 2009, said he’s betting more on the Filipino boxer.
“I’m inclining more, as the fight gets closer, to Pacquiao,” he said. De La Hoya also told Business Insider that Pacquiao’s footwork is key and that “Mayweather has never faced a lefty who moves in and out, side to side like Pacquiao.”
Five-weight world champion Sugar Ray Leonard told The Guardian he’s siding with Mayweather come Saturday. However he expects surprises at the showdown.
“The edge for Pacquiao is that he goes to this fight totally committed, no thoughts of: ‘I got knocked out by [Juan Manuel] Marquez.’ Normally when a fighter is knocked out in that fashion, nine times out of the 10 he’s not the same. But Pacquiao is an anomaly. He’s gifted, a blessed young man with incredible hand speed and power.”
“Mayweather has a couple of ways to win the fight: as a counter-puncher, wait for Pacquiao to make mistakes and make him pay for those mistakes; or just box him, dance around, move and do what he does best. He’s a little bit more versatile than Pacquiao.”
Showtime boxing analyst Steve Farhood said in CBS video that Pacquiao has a window at the beginning of the fight that he can take advantage of.
“We know Mayweather is a slow starter, he’s had a lot of problems in some of his fights in the first couple of rounds, that’s a tremendous opportunity for Manny to start fast,” he said.
But it is only the end of Saturday’s match that will reveal whose predictions are correct.
Rematch
The contract for the upcoming historical fight does not include a rematch clause, although a second match is not impossible.
“If it’s something the fans and fighters want, we’ll make it happen,” said Hershman, president of HBO Sports, which has shown most of Pacquiao’s fights.
Pacquiao’s camp has expressed no issues with the lack of such a clause.
“I tell you, there’s going to be one winner from this fight, and it’s [going to] be the congressman from Sarangani, Manny Pacquiao,” Arum told 24 Oras in an interview.
Despite the money that could be made from subsequent fights, Kevin Iole from Yahoo! Sports believes round two between the boxers is unlikely, primarily due to bitter feelings between both camps.
“Ever since Mayweather left Top Rank in the middle of the previous decade, there have been hard feelings. All sides have tried to downplay the animosity since the bout with Pacquiao was announced, but that’s little more than revisionist history,” Iole wrote.
He also noted that the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is the first Top Rank event at the MGM Grand since Pacquiao-Bradley II.
“And MGM officials have been cool to the idea of working with Top Rank and made plain their preference to deal with Mayweather Promotions.”
“Given the level of agita that exists between the parties more than 60 days after the fighters put pen to paper to fight each other, it’s impossible to imagine they’ll be able to put the anger and intense feelings aside again to come to terms on a rematch,” Iole argued.
But, similarly to the victor of the match, the future of a rematch has yet to be determined.
For now, virtually the only certainty is that The Fight of the Century will air Saturday at 9pm ET/6pm PT.
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek April 29, 2015 MDWK Mag pg. 2)