Starting this Saturday night and ending with the week of June 25, some of the most intriguing and high profile match-ups in boxing will take place.
Manny Pacquiao battles Erik Morales this weekend at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas; on April 23rd, ESPN and Main Events bring an enticing quadruple-header from Caesars Palace across the strip; then on May 14th, Felix Trinidad takes on the difficult challenge of Winky Wright; to cap it off, Arturo Gatti faces Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Atlantic City in late June.
In between there are two other pay-per-view cards featuring a bevy of Latin stars like Marco Antonio Barrera, Rafael Marquez and believe it or not, Julio Cesar Chavez.
That’s six pay-per-view events in a 15 week period. There have been many years in the past where an entire calendar year didn’t have this many pay-per-view shows. 2002 featured just four major events (Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson, Barrera-Morales II, Fernando Vargas-Oscar De La Hoya, Morales-Paulie Ayala and one smaller show featuring Paul Spadafora.)
For a boxing fan to view all of these events live on television, it would cost them approximately $250. And there are talks for a pay-per-view telecast featuring Bernard Hopkins in mid-July.
Shelling out money for this sport’s biggest events is an accepted – if unfortunate – part of being a boxing fan.
But when is it too much? Has the business of boxing hit market saturation?
“I’m not really concerned because I think the public, with discerning fashion, will decide which fights are worth their money,” said HBO Pay-Per-View executive Mark Taffet a few weeks ago in Beverly Hills, during the national media tour to promote Trinidad-Wright. “A number of the fights that we are presenting, we’re very confident are going to be not just worth their time but their money. And we have no problem with our schedule – March, April, May and June in that regard.”
There used to be a time when ‘pay-per-view’ was synonymous with only the biggest and best fights the game had to offer. That is no longer the case, as exemplified by Barrera’s bout against the unknown Mzonke Fana.
Why are boxing fans being forced to shell out money to see a fight that would have a hard time being accepted on ‘Boxing After Dark’?
“There’s a lot of reason you do pay-per-view fights,” Taffet explains. “Sometimes you do them because they’re mega-fights; it’s the way to maximize revenue. Sometimes you do fights because promoters need dates and in their estimation the amount of pay-per-view revenue is greater than the other alternatives and they have to fulfill their commitments to fighters.
“And when you have a long relationship with promoters and fighters like we do, you help out, and if distributing a pay-per-view fight helps the people with whom we do business, we do it.”
Taffet believes that this busy period is nothing unusual.
“We have three events in that time period, there’s probably two others,” he says. “There have been periods where there may have been this many events before, where there have been four or five events in a two or three month period.
“What it does is, it forces the public to make decisions. Also, some of these events are more targeted than others; promoters are aware of that. They go after different market niches and if everybody does their job marketing, then the public will find the events that are appropriate for them.”
In other words, in a sport that is already marginalized, promoters now find niches, within a niche.
“It’s different customers, now,” explains Bob Arum, who is promoting this weekend’s fight and the May 28th show featuring his Latin stable from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. “March 19th is obviously the same customer as May 28th. The Winky Wright-Felix Trinidad fight – which I think will do very well – doesn’t make that much of an impact on my market.”
And Arum makes no bones who makes up his ‘market’.
“My market and my marketing plan is totally, totally geared towards the Hispanics. Every advertising dollar that I spend is geared towards the Spanish market.”
It’s different strokes for different folks. But is there still too much pay-per-view?
“There seems to be a glut of it,” says Showtime’s boxing czar Jay Larkin, whose network will be distributing the May 28th event. “But it’s interesting; it could work out. Pay-per-view could be a niche outlet for boxing if it’s marketed correctly. For example the fight we’re doing in May, it’s a west coast fight; we’re not going to spend a lot of time and money investing and marketing that fight in the east coast.
“That’s a west coast fight; Bob knows how to do that better than anybody else, how to target the marketing, and I think if we do more of these smaller pay-per-view shows, where you’re not giving these ridiculous guarantees out and you’re targeting your audience, you can do very well.”
But Arum, who rode the popularity of Oscar De La Hoya to some of the most lucrative pay-per-view events in the history of boxing, admits, “It would be better if we had no pay-per-view and we had all of these events on HBO, Showtime or even better than that, on network television. But there’s just so much that can be absorbed, so you got to, unfortunately, differentiate, take your best product and put it on pay-per-view.
“That is not good for boxing.”
It could be too much of a bad thing.
THE LINEUP
MAY 19TH- Manny Pacquiao vs. Erik Morales
PRICE- $44.95
POSITIVES: Quite simply this is one of the premier matchups of 2005, featuring two high-profile boxers who couldn’t be in a bad fight if they tried.
The undercard is solid as it features two title fights, with WBA 115-pound champion Martin Castillo facing the respected Eric Morel and Hussein Hussein taking on Jorge Arce for the interim WBC flyweight title.
NEGATIVES: None, really, unless you want to nit-pick the softie that will be picked out for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
RATING (out of a possible five): 5
Projected buy rate (just one man’s opinion): 300,000. Pacquiao and Morales are great little fighters, but they’re still little guys. But for a pair of 130-pounders in the middle of ‘March Madness’, 300-grand is still a formidable number if it can be reached.
APRIL 9TH- Marco Antonio Barrera vs Mzonke Fana
PRICE- $39.99
POSITIVES: Well, it still would beat a night of hockey or soccer. Wouldn’t it?
NEGATIVES: Let’s start here – right off the bat this event lacks a lot of credibility in light of the fact that Morales (who just lost to Barrera in November) is facing Pacquiao and Barrera is facing this anonymous African.
Also the undercard (Fernando Montiel vs. ‘Choko’ Hernandez, Juan Lazcano vs. Justin Juuko) is filled with fights that belong more on ‘Boxeo De Oro’ or Telefutura.
Not much bang for the buck at nearly 40 dollars.
RATING – 0
Projected buy rate: 75,000. This will test PT Barnum’s theory, but going off how Barrera’s mismatch against Kevin Kelley did, look for no more than 75,000 suckers, err, buyers.
APRIL 23RD – Antonio Margarito vs. Kermit Cintron, Juan Diaz vs. Ebo Elder, Jameel McCline vs. Calvin Brock and David Estrada vs. Shane Mosley.
PRICE- $29.95
POSITIVES: This is your proverbial ‘fight fans, fight card’. Any one of these matchups would be good enough to be on HBO or Showtime and are compelling, intriguing bouts. Anyway you look at it, it’s a fun night of pugilism.
And the biggest selling point is the price, $29.95, which is nearly 10 dollars cheaper than the pay-per-view event that takes place two weeks before it.
NEGATIVES: While there are four nice fights, none could be considered a marquee matchup. It reminds me of a pitching staff with five hurlers that could all win between 12-15 games, but doesn’t have a Randy Johnson or a Pedro Martinez.
But then again, couldn’t a staff like that win a lot of games, though?
RATING- 4.5
Projected buy rate: 150,000. There seems to be a pretty good buzz about this card and you know ESPN can promote their own events like nobody else.
MAY 14TH- Winky Wright vs. Felix Trinidad
PRICE- $49.95
POSITIVES: Another appealing matchup that has the tricky Wright taking on the power-punching Puerto Rican. You can never go wrong when two of the best pound-for-pound performers meet up in the ring.
NEGATIVES: If there are any, you just hope Don King puts a fight on the undercard that is more appealing than Zab Judah-Cosme Rivera. What happened to the days when you saw Azumah Nelson scrapping with Jeff Fenech on King’s undercards?
RATING: 5
Projected buy rate: 450,000. ‘Tito’s return against Ricardo Mayorga had approximately 400,000 buys, Taffet believes that they should be able to equal that figure. With King’s never-ending energy and Trinidad’s deep fan base, this one should do well.
MAY 28TH- Jesus Chavez vs. Carlos Hernandez, Rafael Marquez vs. Ricardo Vargas and Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. and Jr.
PRICE- $39.95
POSITIVES: Chavez-Hernandez could be a barn-burner and Rafael Marquez is always fun to watch with his heavy hands and sometimes shaky chin.
NEGATIVES: Yes, the last hurrah of ‘JC Superstar’ should pack’em in at the Staples Center, but should he, or his opponent, Ivan Robinson, really be fighting at this stage of their lives?
RATING- 3
Projected buy rate: 125,000. Never underestimate the strength of the ever burgeoning Latin market – and their loyalty and support of their fighters. Last year the fight between Morales and Hernandez did around 175,000 buys on the same weekend as Mike Tyson-Danny Williams.
JUNE 25TH- Arturo Gatti vs. Floyd Mayweather
PRICE- $44.95
POSITIVES: While most believe this may not be an even matchup, it is a fight that will hold plenty of interest to boxing fans. Both boxers have had plenty of exposure on HBO, while Gatti brings a huge fan base. Mayweather’s, ‘black hat’ persona, may actually help this promotion.
Also with Main Events and Top Rank involved, look for a pretty decent undercard.
NEGATIVES: The question is, just how many people will fork over more money to see a fight where one guy is so heavily favored over the other? Also, speaking of money, will boxing fans have any left to spend by this point?
RATING- 4
Projected buy rate: 250,000. Neither boxer has ever been a featured performer on a pay-per-view show, so this is a bit of the unknown. But perhaps there will be a stronger buy rate than usual on the east coast because of the presence of Gatti.
