Manny Pacquiao PPV Estimated at 1.4 Million Buys, May Kill Mayweather-Pacquiao

By Tyler Curtis (Featured Columnist) on November 15, 2010 Pacquiao's beatdown of Margarito may have did as high as 1.4 million buys. The first reports are saying that the Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito pay-per-view has sold in the region of 1.4 million. This is far from set in stone and a more final number will come out some time during the week. If you following boxing and pay-per-view numbers at all, you know this could be spot on or way off. If this is the true number it doubles the 700,000 that Pacquiao did when he fought Joshua Clottey. This would also make up for the disappointing live gate of 41,374. That number is interesting in itself as that was less than the Pacquaio-Clottey fight. I digress, but to my original point though. This would also be significant because it would match the big May fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Shane Mosley. That number could have been higher if it wasn’t shown in movie theaters as well. This would be significant for two reasons for Pacquiao. So far he has usually failed to live up to Mayweather in the pay-per-view arena. The only time he did outperform him was the Miguel Cotto fight when he did 1.2 million compared to the one million that Mayweather did against Juan Manuel Marquez. Mayweather did better than Pacquiao when he fought both Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton. The De La Hoya fight still stands as the all-time record at 2.44 million. Pacquiao only did significantly lower when he fought De La Hoya, selling only 1.25 million. The other reason that this would be significant is it would severely limit the already slim chances of Mayweather-Pacquiao. If you are being honest with yourself than you know that the fight was already a long shot to happen and one of the snags was how the money was going to be divided. Up until now Pacquiao was the more popular fighter among fans but Mayweather was the bigger pay-per-view draw between the two. That meant Mayweather could ask for more money and the reason was he sold better. Now that Pacquiao has reportedly matched him there is no way the money won’t be split 50-50. If Mayweather wants to be greedy at all (and he probably will be) he isn’t going to take a 50-50 split and will walk away from the fight with no problem because he sees himself getting low balled. If these numbers hold it proves that Pacquiao is a draw and he probably isn’t going to take less than 50-50. In truth the number probably has just as much to do with Margarito being Mexican as it does Pacquiao. I know a lot of people are going to be happy because it proves that Pacquiao is a draw and he did a number equal to that of Mayweather. If that makes you happy I suggest you think about the ramifications this will have on the potential mega fight between the two men. The window to make this fight was getting smaller and smaller as the months went by. This number, whatever it may be, might be the window getting slammed shut. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/518334-manny-pacquiao-ppv-estimated-at-14-million-buys-may-kill-mayweather-pacquiao