Arum Eyes Big Figure For Mayweather-Pacquiao PPV

By Edward Chaykovsky

Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum is usually ready and willing to place a prediction on one of his pay-per-events. But Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao, taking place on May 2nd from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, is so big that not even Arum can predict a proper number.

The PPV record holder is Mayweather’s 2007 fight with Oscar De La Hoya, which generated 2.44 million buys. Mayweather's 2013 encounter with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez drew 2.2 million buys. Mayweather-Pacquiao is expected to exceed those figures - but nobody knows by how much.

“We don’t know what the pay-per-view will do,” Arum said to the Las Vegas Review Journal. “Nobody does. That’s the ‘X’ factor in this whole thing. Will it do three million ? Four million? Who knows? But the one thing we do know is that there is a lot of interest in this fight. People who don’t normally follow boxing are talking about it, which leads you to believe that the fight should do well.”

The event is already estimated to bring in around $400 million in revenue with a live gate exceeding $70 million.

“I think what you’re seeing is the enthusiasm of the people who want to buy tickets, the enthusiasm of the foreign [television] networks and the enthusiasm of the sponsors,” Arum said. “It just demonstrates what a huge event this is.”