LAS VEGAS ? Manny Pacquiao has admitted that, at least in part, his return after a brief retirement from boxing is about money. The man who last year earned well over $100 million for his bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr. needs the cash.
He?s one of the highest-earning athletes in the history of professional sports, and yet, he admits that he can?t get by on a politician?s salary. He gives so much of his fortune away to his countrymen in need that he has to fight to earn the multi-million dollar purses he needs to continue the habit.
But Pacquiao faces a sobering truth on Saturday at UNLV in his bout for the WBO welterweight title against the underdog champion, Jessie Vargas: His money is almost all on the come.
Pacquiao is the headliner of a pay-per-view show that promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank decided to distribute himself.
Ever since the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight did a record 4.6 million sales, boxing pay-per-view sales have largely fallen off a cliff and nearly every one of them has failed to meet expectations. In some cases, they?ve missed the mark by extraordinarily large amounts.
Part of it, obviously, is customer revulsion, fueled by the money grab that Mayweather-Pacquiao became. The fighters made nearly a half-billion dollars between them, and the fight was horrendous. The undercard was one of the worst ever put on a major pay-per-view, with no anticipated or exciting fights.
Rooms on the Las Vegas Strip were raised to more than 12 times their normal rate in some cases. Fans even had to pay to attend the weigh-in. And while all of the proceeds from that went to charity and it was done, organizers said later, for crowd control security reasons, it still left a bitter taste in the mouths of many.
It?s gotten so bad that in September, Canelo Alvarez couldn?t reach 300,000 sales for his bout in Arlington, Texas, against Liam Smith. Alvarez is regularly referred to as the largest star in boxing by his promoter, Golden Boy?s Oscar De La Hoya.
Now Pacquiao, once second only to Mayweather as a pay-per-view attraction, is coming up in a bout that few people wanted to see. Despite his world title and 27-1 record, Vargas is little known.
Fans made it clear they preferred to see Pacquiao face the highly regarded Terence Crawford, whom many would have given a better shot to win than they do Vargas. Pacquiao is more than a 6-1 favorite to beat Vargas.
Arum made the decision to go it alone and dump HBO when he couldn?t come to terms with the network on when to place the show. HBO wanted to steer clear of the Nov. 19 date it had already set for the Sergey Kovalev-Andre Ward pay-per-view.
But because of Pacquiao?s position in the Filipino senate, none of the dates that HBO offered worked with Pacquiao?s schedule.
So Arum opted to save the 7.5 percent fee HBO takes for broadcasting and distributing a pay-per-view and do it himself.
But that meant making choices, and one of them was in Pacquiao?s guarantee. That number still hasn?t been determined, though it will be far lower than what Pacquiao?s received in the past.
Pacquiao?s income on this fight will be determined largely by how well the pay-per-view does. In the past, he was given a large guarantee and then took a lower dollar figure per sale. This time, he?s taking a lower guarantee and getting a far larger cut of the pay-per-view sales.
?I don?t know,? Arum said Thursday when asked by Yahoo Sports what Pacquiao?s guarantee would be. The guarantee is the minimum he?d make for the fight, even if zero pay-per-views were sold.
?We?re going to put a low number on the contract because he has really no guarantee,? Arum said. ?We?ve upped his percentage of the take. He?s fighting on a percentage. We can no longer afford the tremendous guarantee he was getting based on the results in the [April Timothy] Bradley fight. Rather than going in with a huge guarantee, we?re giving him an upside. We played it safe. We?re giving him a huge percentage [but with] no guarantee that would get us in trouble.?
Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz said because Pacquiao gets a piece of all of the revenue and not just the pay-per-view dollars, it makes more sense to him.
?I made this deal thinking we?d have two or three more fights and so this was done and the deal was crafted for the long run,? Koncz said. ?We?re involved in all revenues, but also in all expenses. We?re true partners.
