I’ve no idea how I missed this, but USA Today reported on Monday that the Manny Pacquiao/Ricky Hatton fight will probably end up doing somewhere north of 1 million pay per view buys. Bob Arum says that it’ll finish somewhere between 1.6 and 2 million, but you automatically have to subtract at least 500,000 buys from any kind of estimate a typical promoter gives.
This is a big win for boxing. I know Pacquiao/Hatton was a big fight, but doing over one million is still impressive in this economy given the downward trend for boxing pay per views in recent years. Scott Christ over at Bad Left Hook agrees:
If this is true (or even close to it), even my fairly high expectations would be seriously blown out of the water. What this would mean is that Manny Pacquiao’s phenom status has gone the way of his boxing skills: It just gets bigger and bigger. And a lot of the credit would go to Ricky Hatton, too, who is a fantastic personality and a credit to boxing. Both guys are.
I’m salivating for a Pacquiao/Mayweather fight. I think that’s one that could potentially shatter the Mayweather/De La Hoya pay per view record.
