By Mark Vester
Veteran boxing scribe Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports was advised by "good sources" that last Saturday's HBO pay-per-view featuring Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Shane Mosley generated an early buyrate figure of around 1.1 to 1.2 million, which is not much higher than the 1 million buys generated by Mayweather's pay-per-view with Juan Manuel Marquez last September.
If the buyrate number stands true, it's a very good number, but many industry insiders will consider it a failure. Mayweather-Mosley was the most hyped and advertised pay-per-view in the history of the sport. Mayweather had the best possible B-side opponent that money could buy, outside of Manny Pacquiao, and the expections by Golden Boy Promotions was a buyrate figure in the millions.
Last week, Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer had predicted a possible figure of 4 million buys. Nobody took that figure serious. Most insiders predicted a buyrate number in the realm of 1.5-1.6 million. Mosley was viewed as a serious threat and certainly one of the most recognizable names in the entire sport. It's going to be interesting when the final buyrate number comes down and how it affects the future negotiations to make a fight with Pacquiao.
Mayweather himself had predicted some record breaking numbers. He was going to use the buyrate figure as muscle to demand a higher split of the money against Pacquiao, but if the numbers stay below 1.5, it's going to be hard for Mayweather to make such a demand.
Even if the number exceeds expectations, a good argument can be made that Pacquiao could have generated over a million buys against Mosley, and Mayweather would have had a hard time generating over 700,000 buys with Clottey as the B-side, which Pacquiao was able to accomplish in March.
