Casual Talk from HOLLYWOOD, California – Don’t blame Floyd Mayweather, Jr. if he is brandishing a marketing campaign that would further boost his popularity. Whether you like it or not, he still has
the full backing of his own people. He is still well- loved by over 40 million black Americans, considerably a supremely fertile segment of the United States population. His unique appeal to the massive number of quasi fans in the African-American public makes him an ever increasing attraction in the ring of madness.
“African Americans comprise the United States’ largest racial minority, accounting for 12.1 percent of the total population in 2000,” the United States Bureau of Census reveals.
Let me tell you Mayweather, Jr. has a valid case for demanding more of the share if his fight with Manny Pacquiao pushes through. Yes, negotiation would be much tougher again. The pride of a “Black Salute” and another of Pinoy’s would be the marginal factors in the formative resumption of the such negotiation between the two camps. It surely will intensify in a silent mode. Soon after May 7 Pacquiao-Mosley fight, a “gag order” shall be ressurrected to keep the financial aspect of it in the best guards far off the media’s frenzy.
Now, other than the bargaining power of his achievement being a Pay-per-View king, why does Mayweather, Jr. recently made an outright $100 million demand to make a Pacquiao fight a done deal?
Perhaps he knows something irrefutable: “Manny Pacquiao lags well behind other current boxers in recognizability,” according to the Davie-Brown Index (DBI) published on March 21, 2011.
Yes, Bill King, Senior Writer of Sports Business Journal, did not hesitate to substantiate this case in point.
Let us check this overall DBI ranking for boxers in terms of awareness (A) and endorsement (E), to wit:
1. Muhammad Ali (4)
A – 96.5%
E – 63.4
2. George Foreman (78)
A – 97.0%
E – 69.1
3. Mike Tyson (365)
A – 97.5%
E – 40.3
4. Oscar De La Hoya (548)
A – 79.9%
E – 57.1
5. Laila Ali (772)
A – 64.2%
E – 64.7
6. Floyd Mayweather (1,172)
A – 53.0%
E – 54.7
7. Manny Pacquiao (1,678)
A – 31.0%
According to King, “31 percent of the 1,000 panelists in DBI’s survey recognized Pacquiao either by face or by name, comparable to PGA Tour’s Davis Love III and retired MLB player Randy Johnson”.
King says Pacquiao’s “endorsement score of 58.2, which represents if respondents think he would be an effective endorser, is the highest among current boxers, but roughly equal to the WNBA’s Tamika Catchings, the PGA Tour’s Y.E. Yang and Emeka Okafor of the NBA”.
Considering all these statistical data, is Mayweather, Jr’s pricing demand of $ 100 million share for a Pacquiao fight really reasonable?
