Floyd Mayweather Jr. remains boxing's top draw by a fairly large margin, but the numbers are in for his bout with Marcos Maidana on May 3, and the stats are interesting. For the second time in three bouts, a Mayweather pay-per-view failed to break 1 million buys.
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According to reports, Mayweather vs. Maidana garnered about 900,000 buys, which blew past Manny Pacquiao's fight with Timothy Bradley on HBO, but still fell short of typical Mayweather expectations. It certainly paled in comparison to the sales he generated by fighting Saul "Canelo" Alvarez. In that matchup, which included an 11-city promotional tour, the pair generated $150 million and had 2.2 million buys.
While promotion was much lower scale for this Maidana fight, he entered as a far less known commodity than Canelo, who is a superstar in his own right. After that fight, Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe and Showtime looked like geniuses for inking Floyd to his unique, revenue-sharing contract.
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"This is what we anticipated when we formed our partnership with CBS/Showtime (in early 2013) -- record-breaking results," Ellerbe told ESPN.com. After the underwhelming numbers for Maidana came in though, it's looking more and more like Floyd needs a big name opponent these days to eclipse the one million mark.
That isn't easy to come by these days, which might lead to renewed speculation about whether he needs to face Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather's planning to fight in September, and the only real option at the moment, excluding Pacquiao from consideration, is a rematch with Maidana.
Without Pacman as an option, Amir Khan is the only potential opponent with a fan base approaching Manny or Canelo's size, but he's unavailable to fight in the fall because he will be observing Ramadan and unable to train.
Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, whom Mayweather has vowed he will never work with again, predicted a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight in 2016 after Floyd's deal with Showtime runs out. Arum said he thought Mayweather would try to top Rocky Marciano's 49-0 record by beating Pacman. Nobody knows what will come next, but if the numbers continue declining the Pacquiao route may become the only road.
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