By Jake Donovan
“Let the fight marinate. It will be huge in a year or two.”
In a sport that’s better than any other when it comes to screwing the pooch, something along the lines of the aforementioned quote is almost always immediately offered whenever a big fight is discussed.
From the fans perspective, there’s no greater thrill than watching the two best fighters of a respective division go at it.
From the promoters’ point of view, a great fight takes a back seat to a big event.
Eventually, something has to give.
Over the past couple of decades, the sport has witnessed a steady declination in getting the fights we want, yet fans hit their pockets in order to take in as much boxing as possible.
Better fights are now among us, as the matchmaking has been far more creative in recent years. However, we’re still falling just short of presenting the very best the sport has to offer.
The difference between then and now, is that the fans are finally fighting back.
All of this might sound absurd on the strength of a pay-per-view event that it all but guaranteed to have far exceeded one million units sold. But if the current rumors hold true, then Floyd Mayweather Jr’s virtuoso performance over Shane Mosley last weekend a little short of expectations, and ridiculously short of Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer’s absurd claim that this one would break all box office records.
True, his numbers still far exceed that of any fighter not named Manny Pacquiao. But the possibility of last weekend’s event landing in the region of1.2-1.3 million pay-per-view units sold means that there isn’t a lot of room for upside once the distributors take their cut and the $30 million in guaranteed fight purses are paid.
There exists the argument that Manny Pacquiao’s virtual shutout of Joshua Clottey in March was a huge commercial success. The event – which didn’t turn out to be much of a fight – drew a crowd of more than 51,000 and pulled in upwards of 700,000 pay-per-view buys.
Such numbers confirm Pacquiao’s superstar status, especially when considering he had no help from his opponent when it came to selling the fight. While Clottey was regarded as a bona fide Top Five welterweight contender going in, the event could just as easily have been billed as “Pacquiao Invaded Cowboys Stadium.”
The fight surpassing initial returns – the stadium was originally configured for 40,000 and pay-per-views were expected to land in the vicinity of 600,000 buys – suggests that promoter Bob Arum may very well flirt with disaster and continue to match Pacquiao in-house, in hopes that fans will continue to support while the very best fight that can be made remains on the table.
It will be up to the sport to speak out and demand that they are given what they want, and when they want it.
The belief that every fight needs to be maximized in terms of marketing and anticipation is rapidly becoming a myth, and the outcry following this weekend – particularly once word came out that “Who R U Picking” wouldn’t come close to breaking records – is that there is no justifiable reason for Mayweather and Pacquiao to not make the fight happen once and for all.
The hard sell behind Bernard Hopkins’ rematch with Roy Jones was that it was a fight 17 years in the making. The truth was that both fighters’ inflated egos resulted in their talking themselves out of millions of dollars as their fight was an epic bomb on every level, lacking entertainment value, intrigue, and ultimately interest of any kind. More tickets were given away than sold, and the dismal pay-per-view tally meant that Jones didn’t get paid at all.
Granted, that fight went way beyond marinating, and was simply overcooked, recycled and served as leftovers. It’s a no-brainer that the fight would’ve been a much bigger – and far more significant – event had it happened seven years prior.
But then there are those fights that were meant to be just that – a great fight, and not necessarily a major event.
The first fight between the late Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo was a bout several months in the making. It took three tries to finally make the fight, though only postponed a few months in the process.
Cinco de Mayo weekend provided the backdrop for the two best lightweights in the world, whose bout was carried by cable giant Showtime. An all-out war was expected on paper, and still managed to exceed expectations in reality.
However, when all was said and done, Corrales’ dramatic off-the-canvas 10th round knockout win was remembered as “just” an incredible fight, but not a great – or even noteworthy – event. The bout drew just over 5,000 in attendance, and its rematch indirectly helped put Showtime out of the pay-per-view business, falling well below expectations.
All three entries of the incredible trilogy between Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez could serve as the top fight in any given year, which makes it fitting that two of the three (the rematch and rubber match) won such honors in back-to-back years. Yet for all of the guaranteed bloodshed, it still took three tries just to draw a crowd, with the first and second bouts drawing dismal box-office numbers.
The rubber match eventually crept towards a sellout, but hardly a major event in the grand scheme of things. An incredible fight, in fact the best of 2008? Yes. But not a big event.
It’s possible that one day, a fight between undefeated super lightweights Tim Bradley and Devon Alexander blossoms into a major event, possibly even a pay-per-view headliner. Or it’s possible that neither fighter ever develops into a marquee attraction. Both are very talented fighters, but Chad Dawson – one of the very best in the sport today – can tell you that skills doesn’t always equate box office bills.
So rather than gamble on the likelihood of Bradley-Alexander becoming a major event, why not go with the given that such a fight in the very near future would absolutely determine divisional supremacy, one that boxing fans crave RIGHT NOW?
Ditto for the currently simmering featherweight rivalry between undefeated titlists Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa.
The current plan – if promoter Bob Arum is to stay true to his word – is to allow this fight to build up large enough to where he can stage it at the newly renovated Giants Stadium in New Jersey by next summer. The ageless carnival barker insists that both fighters will run through the featherweight division, at which point they’ll have no choice but to fight each other.
Both fighters are exciting boxerpunchers in every sense of the phrase. But both also posses leaky defense and not-so-granite chins, running the risk that a loss is suffered by one or the other somewhere along the way.
Even if a loss ever occurs, there is the concern that - no matter how much he is built up along the way – Gamboa goes down as just a great fighter and never as a big attraction. Cuban fighters rarely if ever develop into big ticket sellers, due to their lack of a true fan base. Their biggest supporters are back home in the land from which they defected in search of a better way of life and interest in the states is normally limited to watching on television rather than coming out of pocket to witness in person.
Lopez’ star continues to be on the rise, but it’s clear from the way he’s being matched that few if any risks will be taken between now and a showdown with Gamboa. Fans are no dummies and are already catching wind of this. Plans for a summer appearance in New York City, where his last two fights have taken place, were quickly scrapped, with his next fight now taking place in his native Puerto Rico.
He will be facing Bernabe Concepcion in a bout that will air live on Showtime. The fight isn’t a bad one on paper, and should draw a decent crowd in his home country.
But it’s not a showdown with Gamboa. Chances are, audiences will treat with marginal interest any fight in which Lopez is involved until the Cuban bomber is standing in the other corner.
Both Mayweather and Pacquiao have proven in recent fights that they can pull in huge numbers with meeting head-on. But the question remains how long that trend will hold up, and how many welterweights they can use to nibble around the edges before the sport forces them to fight each other or not at all.
Andre Berto’s name has been floated around as a potential candidate in the future of either fighter. The undefeated alphabet titlist was on hand for Mayweather-Mosley last weekend and prior to the bout expressed an interest in fighting the winner.
He boasts the glossy record and the backing of HBO, but is a box office liability. The Haitian-American was always groomed as a TV fighter, never as a gate attraction and his last fight was a huge eye-opener, failing to sell even 1,000 tickets for an intended fundraiser show topped by his knockout win over Carlos Quintana.
Mayweather is already looking in other directions, namely the middleweight division and current leader Sergio Martinez. While Mayweather claimed that Mosley’s alphabet belt was of no use to him, it’s no secret that the second-generation prizefighter has always been fond of “the green belt” one of two alphabet titles currently in Martinez’ possession, in addition to the lineal championship.
Meanwhile, Pacquiao’s future may or may not include whatever in-house talent/notable fighters Arum can recycle. Fighters like the comebacking Antonio Margarito have been mentioned, as well as the winner of next month’s junior middleweight title fight between Yuri Foreman and prior Pacquiao victim Miguel Cotto.
It’s a safe bet that interest will lie in the next fights featuring Mayweather and Pacquiao, whether or not it’s against each other.
It’s an even safer bet that Mayweather-Pacquiao is as big of an event – from both a marketing and significance perspective – as it will ever be.
The lopsided natures of their recent fights all but suggests that little to no competition remains, and that both threaten to reach a point where – despite their greatest insistences to the contrary – Mayweather and Pacquiao need each other perhaps every bit as much as the sport needs their handlers to quit stirring the pot and just serve the damn meal already.
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com and an award-winning member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Contact Jake at JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .